How many hours per week (average)?

Trading Discussion Trading Lifestyle
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I’ve been wondering, and have decided to ask: roughly how many hours per week (average) do Babypips members spend on “trading-related stuff”?

I’m including trading, preparing to trade, journaling, analysing, studying, reading about trading, watching videos, etc. … everything, really.

(I was thinking of asking as a “poll” but I honestly wouldn’t know how to select the options for the replies! So will just ask like this.)

So: roughly how many hours per week (average) do YOU spend on “trading-related stuff”, please?

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I think this is an interesting question and worth knowing the answer from a sample of traders. Bear in mind the number of hours might not be exactly proportionate to the amount of profit.

And that could be the problem for some people - can’t leave the charts alone.

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Honestly… 20 mins twice a week to enter trade levels, and check in once a day in case I need to adjust positions. Let them play out as they do. About 1 hr a week total.

Early on… it was the opposite.

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I suppose that includes “posting at Babypips”?! :blush: :yum:

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Hi @USDxxJPY,

It’s a bit tricky to answer your question. In short, it depends on how serious trading in your life.

Trading is a job, side-job or a “game” for us. When you are running a business, you need to dedicate your time and focus to make it work. The same thing applies to trading. When you have business, you are working hard to find customer / clients. On trading you are working hard to find various methods to trade the market. The more methods you have, the more profit you will have.

Example you trade only USDJPY. More instruments mean more opportunities. More opportunities means more pressure, effecting your psychology. You need to upgrade yourself to manage it. All of these, need time.

More method and more instruments mean more time is needed. So, if you trade as a job, you take a lot of time a day. Otherwise, it should be a side-job or hobby.

For me, I’m using 20 monitors to trading, monitor a lot instruments. I have to make plan for tomorrow while executing current plan. It takes a lot of my time.

Example on Sunday, I need to research economic calendar for 1 week ahead. I need to make plan according to the news. I need to analyst chart to find instruments to trade for a week ahead. I takes hours, mostly 3-6 hours.
When I trade stock market, I need to get information, such as finance reports, corporate action, IPO, etc.

During weekday, I have to monitor the price, when there is particular news to trade, I will collect data to forecast the result to mitigate price movement. It takes 1-2 hours for each event each instrument. Luckily, with the help of AI, it can be a lot easier.
When I trade technically, I need to monitor price movement. You will need this when your profit target is above 500 USD at once, it’s no longer a game. For example today, I monitor market the whole day. I did few scalping for almost 18 hours.

So, all depend on how do you think trading as for you. I believe most BP user is not a full time / serious trader, so you will have different answer. :slight_smile:

Please be careful with the illusion of successful trader, making money while sitting on the beach. When you trade for living, it means big money. You will easily get irritated by looking at your account, example you are having floating loss 10k USD. Can you still be smiling, ignoring your account do other stuff ? :rofl: Or you are naturally monitor the price, preparing plan A, B, C … etc Can you imagine, trading such big number without even care your internet connection? You have to find somewhere with solid internet access, with backup if possible.

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I think @TYGMedia may be right that it is necessary to look at the context to answer this interesting question.

Trading is also practical. I have a narrower perspective and can only look at one screen at a time and only need one screen.

I do 99% of my technical analysis on fast moving charts and I trade 5-6 hours a day, 4 days a week.

I work an average of about 22 hours a week but I am actively trading or looking at my charts only two thirds of this time.

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I also use quick timeframe charts, and am trading for between 10 and 15 hours per week. But that’s gradually increasing as I’m getting a little bit more consistent in the results department (“famous last words”?!).

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It varies a lot for me.

I’m trading/researching/studying mostly at work, when I’m not busy, so it kind of “depends on other people”. I might do a bit more in the summer when there are more people away, more cancelled appointments and so on - but the markets are also quieter then, so I’m not sure how that will work out.

The most I ever do is about 10 hours per week, and my average must be well below that.

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I probably do about 10-20% less than you, in actual trading.

I read a lot about trading, though, and if you include that I might be doing 10-20% more than you.

(Mostly it depends what’s going on, at DS9, you understand.)

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I spend 4 to 6 hours on average a day trading (I trade for a living). I am not including any other related activity because that’s ad-hoc and I don’t have to do it. E.g. I spent exactly 2 hours trading on Thursday, my setup showed, I was in the trade. I spent the rest of the time on the sofa with my wife watching an episode of the Netflix series ‘Sweet Tooth’.

Those hours include waiting for the single trade I take every day. It’s a set occurrence I always look for so I don’t need to burn extra time on analysis, etc. I manage money, so I am very engaged with economics of economies and geopolitics but that’s more fun than to give me an edge.

Hope this helps.

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For beginners you’ll need to put in at least 100 chart hours demo/backtesting before trading live.
Professional traders only analyze for about 4-10 hours per week.
Beginners should be putting in a minimum of 15 hours of core practice per week if you truly want to see rapid success.

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Where do these numbers come from, please? :neutral_face:

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Depends on your strategy.

You could do a breakfast breakout strategy for under an hour a day. There’s quite a few variations on this.

There’s a 1 hour breakout strategy in a thread somewhere (here - London Breakout Strategy - 1H Timeframe Modified) that could be done in as little as 5-10 minutes a day. Not saying it’s profitable though, I’ve not tested that over a long period of time.

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Not sure any of that is true. 100 hours of demo seems way too much, at some point you have to play with real money to figure out how to really trade.

The professional traders bit is definitely wrong. There are all sorts of traders. Some day traders and scalpers sit going all day every day. Others might just place orders every night and walk away.

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I typically only trade the open of London and New York sessions. 1-2 hours each is typically enough. Sometimes every day, sometimes not much depending on my other commitments.

Occasionally the market doesn’t play nicely and you get stuck with open trades. I don’t like that because I constantly check my phone to look for good opportunities to get out

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Absolutely. Many of us have spotted this. @jackie.wilson just expressed it more politely than you and I are doing! :sweat_smile:

But to answer Jackie’s question, I think we can see from the member’s username and logo where the figures come from. [Whether it will be a help or a hindrance for the member for people to see that is another matter. :blush: ]

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It’s my full time job. I trade about 7 hours per day, 4 days per week (I don’t usually do Fridays).

I think the amount of time I spend on “trading-related stuff” might just be increasing, though, now that I’ve joined and am enjoying this forum. I don’t know yet whether that’s good or bad! :sweat_smile:

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10-12 hrs
Market analyssi - 30 min a day
Execution - 2 - hrs
Jourmaling - 30 min

New strategies - 3 hrs with backtesting (not including in trading)

Writing this i realised, how much time I spent, thanks for shifting my focus for a while :grinning:

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7 hours on average.

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Neither of the successful retail traders I know did anything like as much as that. (One of them actually bypassed that stage completely).

How do you know how many hours per week “professional traders” analyze for? Many employ analysts, or subscribe to analysis services, don’t they?

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