I have just recently adjusted to swing trading. i was day trading recklessly on my demo and i have almost blew my account. So i am considering swing trading if it’s something i could adapt to and love and religiously stick to it. i have just been observing charts since i decided to start swing trading. I feel like its even more harder to place trade whereas it was much more easier to trade on a day trading. Any like minds here that can share that experience for new swing traders and when its best to place a trade.
There’s an old and simple technique for swing trading which is very easy to recognise and always objective.
Example - uptrend -
- look for a candle on your trading time-frame whose range (not close) makes a new high
- look for this to be followed by 3 successive candles which have successively lower highs and lower lows
- after the third lower candle, set a buy order just above its high (as long as the uptrend is still intact) and a stop-loss just below its low
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You can even try the same thing after only 2 successive candles as @tommor describes, rather than waiting for 3 successive candles … again, as long as the trend is still intact, however you define that.
I think this is what Al Brooks calls “H2/L2 entries”?
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You will find your answers here:
Swing trading can definitely feel like a slow dance after the fast-paced hustle of day trading! It’s all about finding your rhythm. Take your time observing those charts and spotting trends
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News will most likely have a greater direct effect on your trade when you place a trade so make sure you are up-to-date on the latest ones.
It seems harder to you since you’ve already become comfortable with the day-by-day nature of taking trades practiced by day traders. It may take some time, but eventually you’ll end up enjoying it since you could have a LOT more time in between trades and have bigger profit targets, thereby increasing the amount of money you can make per trade.
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You can check the babypips education section and can learn more about swing trading.
I have found by trend trading Weekly time frame, is a stronger swing approach. Every open day I follow any trend trade candles, the last day’s one as being the highest, and then go back to the 4hr chart to see if that is in line with the weekly trend.
If not, no purchase for that day. If in line, you could open a trade at either the 4H, Daily, or Weekly trend bearing in mind that you need a higher account size from the weekly chart going down to the 4hr.
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I cannot pretend that I have vast experience in any of these markets, but I have been trading for over 15 years. It is my understanding (in Forex) that the market spends up to 80% of its time ranging, and less than 20% of its time going long and going short.
Consequently, I have a few rules about deciding, before setting up to enter any market, whether my analytics is showing me a long, short or ranging market. I also have strict rules about what instruments I am trading, whether I am investing or trading (the intended timeframe and the target outcome) and whether I will fully or partially exit, or ladder into our out of a specific trade.
It is a lot of grunt work for no reward (far fewer entries than you would wished to have resulted from your efforts in analysing setups), but I have rarely accounted for the effort value of my own time, preferring to respect mostly the time value of my equity invested.
Though I am extremely passionate about trading, it has never been a topic that has contributed much to my overall progress in life. I still work and am past conventional retirement age. When I am not consulting (out of contract work like now) I can spend so much time on investment and trading that I sometimes wonder if I should continue contracting. But that consistent day rate of invoicing to a corporate is still the least risk and highest reward I can earn so I never manage to blow my brains out in just one income pursuit.
I am currently hopeful that I have a specific plan (one plan out of four in the crypto space) for range trading (sniping or intraday trading) for which the last two months of pilot results are encouraging, and that will make me a lot more peaceful with trading instead of having to rely on long or short market presumptions. It is the ultimate head game for me. Any fool can make money in a long market. The trick is to stop losing it in a short or choppy (ranging) market. The ultimate nirvana, for me anyway.
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