GIVEAWAY: If you only have 1 hour a day to trade, what should your top 3 priorities be?

Really like your strategy.

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If you only have 1 hour a day to trade then your top 3 priorities should be:

  1. Get better time management and organisation skills and multi task better.
  2. Get up earlier.
  3. Buy Bitcoin!
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all i take is 3 mins a day ,thats all ,its the strategy thats matter.

Hmmm. :thinking: I remember how I had a few hours each day to study and it still took me quite a while. :sweat_smile: But that’s just me, and we all learn on our pace. I would say that if I had only 1 hour, I would

  1. Start with studying the basics of forex here on babypips
  2. Looking for a simple strategy I could start with, and is recommended for beginners and
  3. Backtesting/ Demo trading

Not sure if this will fit 1 hr tbh :sweat_smile: But maybe improving your time management skills would also be helpful in managing the 1 hr. Haha. :smiley:

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“1 hour to learn”
(1) Don’t pressure yourself
(2) Keep an open mind
(3) Don’t expect anything to stick on your first pass

“1 hour to open trades and monitor charts”
(1) Know/simulate your VAR (value at risk) for open positions, for many different scenarios
(2) Trade what you see, not what you want to see
(3) Look for overall market correlations/relationships and how they impact your strategy

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1hr/day?

Sadly some might translate this to; How do I make $10000 with a $50 account per day. Maybe some wizards out there can do this though, I don’t know. Or maybe if the angels finally blew that trumpet to signal the end of the world, no doubt XAUUSD would rally 1,000,000 pips and one could achieve this :slightly_smiling_face:

If you had an hr/day to trade, definitely analysis should be your top priority.

  1. Know the market conditions; are we trending up or down or are in a range market? There are multiple tools to help achieve this; MAs, Bollingers, channels, MACD, stochs etc etc etc.
  2. If we’re trending what part of the trend are we in? Beginning, middle or end? The easiest way to know this is by applying Multiple Timeframe Analysis. Remember, MTA exists primarily to help you pick entry and exist points for a trade, whether short term or long term or both. And MTA is not a definite strategy but different strategies employ MTA e.g. MA crossovers and Elliot wave strategies employ MTA but they’re wildly different strategies. Think about this way, if you’re a sheep MTA is your shepherd.
  3. If you see a trade setup set the terms of your trade following proper risk management. How much are you willing to risk vs how much are you hoping to gain? Again, this is all based on your analysis. I’ve read superman likes to risk only 1% of his equity on a single trade while the joker goes as high as 30%. Feel free to tell me who has been the more successful 💁

Check your results. Hopefully things go our way more often than not.

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Classical end of the day strategy.

  1. Identify trend on W1
  2. Look for candlestick patterns on D1
  3. Place SL and TP using ATR

K.I.S.S.
:wink:

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  1. Learn hidden divergence theory if you have yet to do so.
  2. Check H1 to D1 across all liquid pairs for hidden divergence using the common indicators like RSI, MACD, Stochastic, MACD, MA.
  3. The setups have a high winrate if you use ATR or previous pullback for SL but they are rare so 1 hour a day should be plenty to check for them.
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If you had 1 hour a day to learn and to trade then you would want to focus on a daily strategy so that you can “set and forget”.

  1. Learn the basics through BP’s School of Pipsology, and learn about daily candles and what they are telling you. Also learn about price structure, trending/ranging markets:

  1. Narrow your pairs down to 5 or 6 to prevent too much correlation. Too many correlated pairs will just lead to overexposure in the market. By limiting your pairs you get to know them better, and over time as you gain experience, you’ll have a better idea how they move on a daily basis.

  2. Use your knowledge of candles and price structure to pick out the best opportunities using a daily chart. Use pending orders to buy/sell, and always have an exit plan in the form of a SL, TSL and/or TP. If you use a hard SL then you will need a TP, if you use a trailing SL then a TP may not be necessary:

Once you have everything in place, 1 hour per day should be more than enough time to trade, while leaving time to do all the other things in life that you love to do.

Good luck!

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  1. Identify market trend using preferred strategy.
  2. Identify support zone for bull market and resistance zone for bear market using preferred strategy.
  3. Place a pending order to buy or sell in the direction of the trend. Manage risk properly.
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Currency pairs only move so much per day. If you only have one hour to trade, as many have pointed out here, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be sitting in front of your trade station when that movement happens. One way to work around that challenge is to favor longer timeframes and trends as has been mentioned.

Another way is go robot. Learn to code your own expert advisor or trading script/system, and let the computer do the work for you. Spend your one hour per day looking over journal logs to make sure everything is working as expected, examine trade logs, and kick off extensive back tests to determine the best configurations for your bot.

The 3 priorities should be the things you focus on outside of that precious one hour:

1- Learn to code. Do research on the various languages and approaches that are popular out there. It could be MQL 4 or 5, It could be Python making API calls to your broker. I haven’t used it, but I believe ninjatrader has a “ninjascript”, and there are many other ways to program automated trading bots. Find the approach that suits you best and become as proficient as you can in it. There’s plenty of free training material and guides out there.

2- Find a solid, simple, consistent strategy and codify it. This sounds like the easy part, but it’s actually the hardest part. There are so many different Forex trading strategies; different ways to trade range and trending environments, indicators, price action, retracements, patterns, limitless possibilities. Do a bunch of reading here at BP. You’re sure to find something that works for you if you keep at it!

3- Find creative ways and times to learn. I used to have to regularly make the 4 hour drive between St. Louis and Kansas City for business. I used it as a great opportunity to consume audio books on trading. The same thing might apply to a nice long jog or walk during your regularly-scheduled exercise time, mowing the lawn, etc. If you look for them, you can find all sorts of chances to Forex your brain while your body is busy with something else.

The good news is, solving this problem will serve you even when you do have more than 1 hour to trade. Not only will your robot not have your emotional trading problems, you have better things to do, like make drinks and watch it trade for you! Cheers and good luck!

Edit - if you’re reading this thinking, “yeah great but I’m no computer programmer!”, we will not tolerate that kind of negative self-talk! You simply forgot the word “yet” at the end of that sentence. It’s not as hard as you think it is. I’m a really simple country boy redneck sort of creature and I learned MQL4 just by forcing myself through the free e-book they host on the Metatrader site. You can learn this. Yes, you. They call it a language for a reason!

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Eleven years at school, two years at college, three years at university, and all I needed to do to learn how to draw a horizontal line— Tom Dante.

  1. I’m a morning guy. Wake up and make my bed. Which is my first daily achievement. Which leads to walking for five kilometers, as my second achievment. Now I’m in the right achievment mindset.

  2. Read the news, focus on financial events. Walk downstairs to the cellar, enter, and close the door, spray mosquitos, turn on my two computers and one big screen, sit down and select smooth jazz guitar music - then open my two live accounts and one FTMO demo. Now I’m in the Zone.

The most important rule of trading is to play great defence, not great offence – Paul Tudor Jones

  1. My Ichimoku trending set up sees me through 28 FX pairs in my alloted hour.

It’s that simple.

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  • Skim over forex pairs and see which ones are close to fulfilling my trade entry conditions.
  • Mark them and maybe add alerts.
  • Enter trades for which these conditions are already satisfied.
  • Sometimes exit trades I’m certain of losing.

Bonus:
Close the trading terminal and try to keep busy/sleep for the remaining 23 hours of the day.

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If I only had an hour per day to trade it would be around the NYSE Close. I would focus on forex D1 charts, spot the uptrends and downtrends using the slopes of the 20 and 50EMA’s, and set buy or sell orders behind the current price on each of these, close the positions which have made 3 consecutive “with-trend” closes, then go and pour a glass of good wine.

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-analyse on 15M and 30M
-Checkout 3bulls news event on the pairs(preferably volatile pairs)
-lookout for an entry on session open/interception

Top 3 priorities!
1: Check all relevant news for the market of interest. Usually normal newswires, several trading groups hot event list as such and global activity.

2: Once I digest #1 and have a broad picture of interesting directions; I will determine where my day is going depending on long term and short term goals.

3: Once I have determined to focus on long or short term I will execute the appropriate trading plan accordingly. I love short term collection; but for sanity I make sure I have a balanced long term on going.

Ultimately love the market, love the opportunity, do your homework, listen to the pros who have lived it in great success and failure. Never open your risk beyond your plan. It is easy to chase ups and downs with the adrenaline and energy that comes from success and unfortunately seek to appease that empty sick feeling when we make a mistake or a market completely dumps your direction. Make sure your profit loss targets are in your comfort zone and when a trade moves out of either side let your AI close the trades.

Im still a geek nerd wanna be trader. Wish everyone extreme success!!!
Paul

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  1. Identify your one hour strategy
  2. Trade only a few assets
  3. Depend on signals from trusted sources
  1. Trade the Daily Chart
    Trading the daily chart gives you so many advantages. It will reduce a lot of noise especially if there are news events happening during the day. 1 hour before daily candle closes is the time to trade, either to open, close, or manage running trade. And remember don’t do trade after the market opens, because spreads are insane, after all, one hour before market closes, usually, there will be no crazy moves, so expect the same closing price between the daily candle closure and 1 hour before daily candle closure.

  2. Strategy
    Using daily charts have no different from any other timeframes, you’re just moving into a higher timeframe. Of course it will make your trade longer to finish, but keep in mind that it also gives you a bigger pips to catch. So it doesn’t matter if you are a price action trader or an indicator-heavy algorithm trader. Just analyze the charts 1 hour before the market closes and scroll through all pairs that you trade if there are any opportunities.

  3. Big News Event
    If you still want to consider news, the most important thing you need to be aware of is a big news event. For example, FOMC, NFP, presidential election. You can check forexfactory and if there any kind of that news on some currency, you can skip the currency for the next day. Because trading the news would be dangerous for our trade, as the price will going up and down haphazardly, so the best solution is not to trade it. So you can avoid that currency only for one day.

The most important thing is you have backtested your strategy, either it’s price action or indicator algorithm, as long as you’ve backtested it, and know its performance is what you want, then go follow your system and trade!

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My first post even though I have been a babypips member for ages…it is never too late!

Step 1: After NY daily close (10pm GMT), identify the trending Major/Minor pairs using the TradingView Forex Screener in daily timeframe
My trend template:
SMA20 above SMA50
Last Price above SMA50

Step 2: Identify the pairs that have pulled back, and testing daily support/resistance and/or SMAs in daily timeframe

Step 3: Shortlist the pairs if:
SMA20/50/200 are trending in the same direction;
There is no major news related to the currency on the following day; and
The pairs offer favourable Risk:Reward

Step 4: Hide SMAs (TradingView has the option to hide the indicator) and review shortlisted pairs between 6am and 6pm GMT after 4hours candle close

Step 5:
BUY @ Market Order if:
Double bottom pattern and/or Bullish engulfing candles formed at daily support in 4hrs in the pair trending up in daily
Stoch is oversold in 4hrs
Favourable Risk:Reward

SELL @ Market Order if:
Double top pattern and/or Bearish engulfing candles formed at daily resistance in 4hrs in the pair trending down in daily
Stoch is overbought in 4hrs
Favourable Risk:Reward

This is work in progress but provides good overall framework for me. It does not take me more than an hour on daily basis, however time can be further reduced by skipping step 4 and focusing on daily timeframe.

Thanks for reading and I welcome feedback/suggestions.

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-Scan the pairs that interest you the most
-Look at Daily for trend
-Look at Price action on H4 and use H1 for entry
-Let price move into your perfect setup
-Set price alerts so you know when price is moving to where you want it.
-Enter when your perfect setup appears
-Ensure good risk management. (% of capital willing to lose)
-Identify TP ( set one optional or set alerts and see what price is doing. Maybe you caught a runner)

Be PATIENT
Let it play out!

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