Fulltime Job and Trade. How you do that?

Hello my Pip Friends

I really have a hard time to decide for myself, wich timeframe to use. Im at the beginning, online Course, reading books etc.
Everything smooth till now. I have fun learning :slight_smile:

But i lack confidence on wich Timeframe im gonna use for my future trading and demo trading. For now, i do a mix of everything between 1 H, 4 H, Daily. Im sure im not for lower Timeframe like the 1 Minute or 5 Minute. Pips up and down drive me crazy so its not for my Trade Personality. I didnt closed the door definetely but for now, the beginning, im gona stick to higher timeframe then 30M .

My biggest problem for now:

Im in a trade and its gonna really good with various Pips plus. What i do? As soon there is a little retracement i jump out of the trade. I could kill myself for this behaviour…i think its the fear to lose a winning trade. Since i dont have much time to look on my charts all the day (i do every evening after work a 2 Hour Screening and Backtest and 2 hour of reading book).

So i would like to share my journey with you and i would like to have some tipps from you guys how you do it ? How to get this stupid fear under control. Its not the fear of loosing since i dont care to be right all the time, its really the fear of loosing a winning trade….strange…

Before Work (6 AM, after the daily morning Women Business )

  • Look at Forexcalendar to identify big news event to avoid them (or at last the heavy one)
  • Looks at currency strenght. I pick up a medium strenght versus a medium low currency. No more as 3 Pairs at last.
  • I looks to the charts and i decide after those two key question if i pick those or not:
  1. Do i feel good with those charts?
  2. Is there any key level in sight? If yes, i mark those.
  3. Set alarm for price
    End.

I do not spend more then 30 min /pro Chart for my analyisis because i have found out something: If i spend too much time with my analysi i start to lost confidence in my research. More and more question comes up…ist he Support line there…or not…maybe there.
With this technique its going really well. I take decision, i close the notebook and i wait for my alarms.
Repeat evening and next morning.

But…damn me…i lost confidence when im 100 pips in my favoure. Why this happen ? How you ride this problem ?
Do you think, using Trailing Stop could fix this?
Maybe multipe Targets?

I have a picture of one of my trade where i just cut off a running trade.

My initially Target was down (look at the left side…the level a bit above 1.30000 and i jumped out on 1.31852 . How stupid…
No evidence of cut the trade off. Nothing!

Thanks alot and pleace, forgive my english.


Your daily routine sounds like good discipline, and it is always impressive to see someone who can trade while keeping a full-time job.

Exits are much more important than the entry. Correct exits should be identified in the same way as correct entries - by chart analysis. Think of a trade as a strange empty building - it might hold treasure or monsters might be in there. Don’t go in until you can see there is a way out. Would you go into a strange building if you might get locked in? Or if it might be on fire?

Actually, you need two exits but decide where they are in advance - set a stop in case price does not follow your plan, set this as soon as you enter. Plus a target for where to take the profits, as the probability of more profit reduces. The stop is a fixed price, set it immediately, never change it. The target can be left for now, and rather than a price it could be a pattern of price crossing a MA or a certain % pullback or whatever you like. But define the pattern before you enter the trade: don’t exit until the pattern forms. There are hundreds of chart patterns and candlestick patterns etc. and these are all basically entry patterns. But decide your own exit pattern or patterns before you even start trading. Don’t wait for the trade to run. And don’t let the profit decide when you should get out - do you control your money or does it control you?

It’s not easy to balance between a full time job and trading. But it’s not impossible. Discipline and keeping it simple is the key here. Judging by your routine you seem to have some discipline but don’t let fear stop you. If you don’t feel that the 1 minute and the 5 minute are not your time frames then don’t use them. There is no point on wasting your time on something that you don’t wish to use. Like tommor said don’t let your trades control you, you should be the one who has all the control and decides if you will close them or keep them. Don’t be too hard on yourself and don’t overthink your strategy, often overthinking and too much analysis ruins the trade. You will see that the more time passes the less scared you feel. Take it from this point of view - if you close the winning trade even with a small profit, it will still be a winning trade. If you lose it, then you will know what not to do next time. It’s really that simple.

Take a look here 301 Moved Permanently

Thanks for all the reply. :slight_smile:

I will look into it, Jezzode, thanks.

And i will stick at last to my routine. It give’s me at last confidence. I just need to stop the fear to lose my pips.
Otherwise, if i see im totaly wrong with a trade decision and the trade is running in wrong way i dont hestitate to scratch the trade even for a small profite.

So its really only the fear when a trade is running…GOOD…stupid strange.

This sounds good.

Although there is a lot to learn and understand in trading, success comes 80% from psychology and only 20% from technical knowledge.

You have to accept that some trades will be losers even if you do everything right. But mostly your trades should be winners. The question of what to do with a winning trade often doesn’t get enough thought. If you’re trading price action, getting you with any level of profit is probably good: if the charts show no particular reason why price should go further, why hold onto it?

But if you get into a position which is following a major trend, I try to hold that position until the trend ends in either a reversal or a significant pull-back. After all, the usual next thing to happen in a trend is that price continues in the same direction as the trend, and this makes life easy: you don’t have to be very very accurate with timing or entry level or position size, so this method forgives small mistakes. So all my trades are trend-following.

The Story about broken Rules and revenge Trade.

Hello Babypips. i would like to share with you my mistake in this trade with a really funny loss. I thank this losses because i was about to become too confidence after some good results in the last weeks.

So here we go. EUR/CHF. I saw, i dont know where and how, a short possiblity. In my mind there was a high probability of falling Eur/CHF after a powerfull rally. There where NO SIGNS…of weakness on the side of the bulls…but in mind there was only the idea to short it…short short short.

Here is the result. The bulls spiked throug the R area like a hot knife through butter. My SL got eat like a dinosaur after a diet.
After it…i was angry…i didnt got this feeling long time because i was really happy to control my emotion but this time i was angry. What i did? Revenge trade! What happened? I got smashed to the wall again…

Well…never break rules my friends…




EUR/CHF bounced yesterday, I understand it was possibly due to reduced expectations for a Le Pen election in France, but who knows?

I was (and remain) short this pair but that’s on a longer time scale so I’m not stopped out (yet). But what was your technical analysis that said go short when you did the first time round?

Well my analysis, or better, my brain told me that after the break of the R (the redline) there would be a reverse due to totaly lack of any evidence for the rally. I was assuming, the price would stall just at the second red line. The price reactet as i was thinking of but came then back stronger and pushed through the R and my SL.

  1. Poor analysis from my side. To be honest, totaly wrong
  2. I had the possiblity to stop the trade before but i saw still a short and i continued to see it till i got burned from the second time.
  3. Price came back yes, but much further away from my first “analysis”.

Poor poor and again poor skill :slight_smile:

Thanks Rosalba1981. Seems like you weren’t actually a million miles out. Shows how difficult it is trading reversals.

Why did you put your stop where you put it?