So I’m in the undergraduate section of the pipsology school, and I seem to be caught in a quandary. I personally prefer to enter and exit my trades more quickly and see the results, and the idea of letting my trades run overnight while I’m not watching for several hours makes me shudder.
However, I work full-time during the day and would be trading for 4-6 hours a night starting at 7 eastern, and I’m wondering if that is enough time and an ok time of day to commit to a day trading strategy rather than swing. I also wonder if the Tokyo session provides enough liquidity to maintain consistent profitability while day trading. I’m only going to have probably 4-6 K to invest to start with, and with the wider stops swing trading requires I don’t know it that will be enough.
Given all this, I’m trying to decide which style is going to work better for my personality AND my schedule and trading capital. I know I’m going to have to make my own decision on it, and I will, but I’d like to get some input from those of you who have been at this a while. Thoughts?
The most significant moves in forex come when both the London and New York stock exchanges are also trading, so you’re already limiting the opportunities open to you.
Why so averse to holding overnight? Favourable moves happen overnight as well as the negative ones but the forex market doesn’t have an in-built gap structure a sit doesn’t cease trading Monday-Friday. This means that a stop-loss on a forex position is usually not going to be missed as often as they can be with stocks and the like.
I know the best time is during the London/New York overlap, but I don’t have a choice there. The time I have is the time I have. That’s why I’m trying to figure out if a day strategy will work during the evening or if I pretty much have to do swing.
As for holding trades overnight, I suppose it’s just a psychological thing. I don’t like the idea of things happening with my money while I’m sleeping through at all.
This can be a challenge. Day trading is tough but I have found cultivating patience is even tougher but more beneficial in the long run.
[quote=“musicguy1967, post:1, topic:166522”]
the idea of letting my trades run overnight while I’m not watching for several hours makes me shudder.
[/quote]… Why?
One thing that I have found useful is limiting my risk, using a stop that is not arbitrary and trying to get to a protected breakeven point ASAP.
I am on the east coast and work full time. No chance to trade during the day. I have found that less screen time is better for me. I’ll do my analysis at night. Scout my trades and plan to enter at the NY close.
This has dramatically reduced my “freak-out” factor for sure!
I appreciate concern over holding overnight. Its horrible when you wake up and you lost money while you were just having sweet dreams and doing nothing risky at all.
But its also a good feeling to wake up and find you made money. And this while your PC screen was dark and you weren’t even at work.
Last week I was away sightseeing for a few days and came home to find I had more money than when I went away even after the cost of the trip. Of course, I put my stops in place before I went away, I also put pyramid orders in and found a bunch of these had triggered. Nice.
You need to research on scalping strategy. Focus primarily on Yen pairs for liquidity. USDJPY may be a good pair to start with. Research on average true range for USDJPY during the 8hr tokyo session. collect statistical data whether price tend to pullback at tokyo opening or does trend continuation, etc… You need search google for scalping strategies and explore the various scalping technique available. Adopt one or two that you can understand and execute comfortably.
Check out Dennis STRONG WEAK pairing. He collect data with 200 MA on 4hr chart on a daily basis. Maybe you can improvise with 120MA on 1hr chart and Collect the data every 8hourly. Starting with Tokyo session opening hours at GMT0000HR. I would love it if you can post the 8 hourly data in babypips. Everyone gets to benefit.