I trade on 15minute charts and deal with the majors especially the EUR/USD. By the end of the day, i have placed about 40 trades. As a result i have very many losing trades with the ratio of wins to losses being as bad as 1:7. I would like to know how many legit trade setups, on average, could possibly occur in a single session say the London session, on any trading day.
Although I’m just a fellow noob here, I’m pretty sure the number of setups in a day depends entirely on your system and trading style. Overtrading has got nothing to do with how many trades you take in a day, it’s quite a misnomer actually. Overtrading simply means taking unjustifiable trades that has got nothing to do with your trading methodology. I believe impulsive trading is a better term. If this doesn’t fit your description I believe you have to tweak your system.
depends on what system u base ur trading on.
Smaller TF gives more entries. Higher TFs less.
for an example if you are trading D TF and H1 combined, 2 entries max a day per pair is my limit. Go above this and something is wrong.
The same cannot apply to some one who is trading say the min 15 and H1 charts.
They might have 5 to 10 entries a day.
So it all depends.
I trade about 10 different markets… and I’m scalping…and I average about 25 trades a day… and this is a WHOLE LOT compared to most people.
However, of those 25 trades, I am really only trading 1 or 2 setups in each market…i’m just taking 2 or 3 trades per setup, taking a few ticks here and there.
I have about a 65% win ratio…however, if we look at those numbers closely, that’s 10 markets (I trade asia, london, and U.S.), 25 trades… so, 2.5 trades per market, per day. I usually set a 1:1 risk reward, so I make or lose about the same per trade.
BUT, i’ll admit I take on average 2 trades per setup when I should really just take 1…and hold it longer.
So, lets re-examine this a bit. that means in 10 markets, there are really only about 12-13 good moves in a 24 hour period = about 0.35 good trades per session 
I’ll give you a bit of advice. If you are taking any more than 2 trades per pair, per session, you ARE overtrading. I’m not saying that some don’t have a methodology that takes dozens (or even hunderds/thousands) of trades per session and make a profit. But as someone who does this full time, I can honestly say out of the 30+ full time traders I have come across, only 1 guy trades as frequently as your saying on any particular market, and makes a living at it.
BUT, he only would trade the first 30 minutes of the u.s. stock market open, and stops after he has 10 trades.
So, hmm…that’s about… 97% of professional traders I know don’t trade as frequently per market as you do, and 100% that don’t average that many per day. I do know of quite a few amatuer, losing traders that trade that much.
::::shrug::::
it’s not overtrading if your goal is excitment, or to gamble.
But I would say it is overtrading if your goal is to run a business trading currencies in which you make a good income from.
To answer your question as directly as possible, I would say 1 - 2 significant swings per pair, in london session, and 1-2 good moves per pair, in the U.S. session.
But if we reduce it to REALLY good moves, I’d say no more than 1 - 2 per DAY, per market. And lets keep it real, if you want to make a good profit, you want to find out how to determine the best move of the day, make 1 trade, make 100 pips on it while your laying on the beach on your private island.
Jay
P.S. davidlee is right on too… your system will better define this than anything else… but since you asked how many good moves in the market on a 15 min chart in the london session… I’d say 1 - 2 per pair.
Yes. If you have more losses than winners, just trading less would decrease your loss. Not trading at all would give you a loss of zero. I suggest to revise your strategy. Not every setup has an edge over the long haul.
40 trades per day to me is definitley overtrading(I average 5 per month) however having more losses than winners doesn’t mean you are overtrading, you can lose more trades than you win and still make money, that will depend on your MM strategy. Trading less could also decrease your winners. 15m charts makes alot of “noise”. Switching to a higher time frame will definitley decrease the amount of setups you find daily and I strongly believe that the higher time frames are more reliable. Test your system on a higher time frame and you’ll know where to go from there.
Thanks for all the insightful replies. My previous attempts to find straight answers that would help me solve the confusion i was facing were futile. I guess i have to tweak my system to ensure that i only take viable setups hence reducing on the number of trades i take on a daily basis…
I would tweak your system to focus on fewer stronger trades. However, as others have said it does depend on your system. Good luck and happy trading!
Almost definitely yes.
Professionals can trade in this way but even if they are the scalper type they don’t take 40 trades a day.
Apart from the fact that scalpers lose the majority in spreads.
I for example swing trade and take maybe 4 trades a week maybe less sometimes with an av RR of 1:2, on av around 150pips profit a trade.
Most newbies start on the lower timeframes taking lots of trades whereas they should in fact start the complete opposite way on higher timeframes taking trades less often.
Also, the reason pros “can” take this many trades is that their trading costs are much much cheaper, even then they are taking on av 1:3 or more rr trades.