I am a new trader, I just started on a demo account. When I look at my charts no matter the time frame I never seem to see my indicators lineup for a buy signal. This leads to discouragement and i just give up looking at my charts. I feel like I’m not looking at my charts enough, so my first question is this. How long do you spend looking at your charts?
Currently I am trying to use the ichimoku system as that what i am most familiar with.
thank you
I spend little time looking at charts but I am a long-term trader using the daily time-frame and am often in a position for 3-10 days. I am almost never out of the market.
My figure doesn’t matter (and isn’t relevant, and is very low). Yours does. At the stage you’re at, hopefully a lot, and a high proportion of your time.
Ichimoku is not a “system:” it’s a set of indicators (and a good one). What settings are you using, and with what chart-speed?
That’s probably because you’ve bought into the notion that there are "perfect setups. I hate to break it to you, but they don’t exist. Let me see if I can help you out. Take a look at this chart of the EUR/USD:
It’s obvously in a triangle (or wedge, since it slopes downward a little), which is a type of trading range. Since I have learned to recognize price action patterns, it took me less than ten seconds to recognize this one.
Now, most traders will wait for the breakout before they attempt to jump in. But did you know that there are at least five possible scalps (trades) within this pattern?
The first one is a double bottom that forms the first area of support. Then, you have three failed breakout attempts that form a double-topping pattern. The result was the first move down, ultimatley forming the second point of support.
The tight micro-range at the bottom finally broke out and then formed another resitance point at the top. Although the entry here would have been difficult, you would have been able to get yet another quick scalp to the bottom of the triangle.
Of course, the last enty at the bottom most traders would not take, but in theory you could have.
The whole point of this is to show you that once you learn price action trading, you no longer need unreliable indicators. For exmple would moving averages been any use to you here? Absolutely not!
So, the sooner you ditch the indicators altogether, the sooner you will be profitable. 
Traders vary a lot in their approaches, but - statistically speaking, what Steve just said there is very likely to be exactly right! 
The thing is you don’t just look at chart. You analyze chart using some price action techniques like support and resistance, double top/bottom, candlestick patterns, among others.
I usually spend a few hours. Just remember, trading takes patience and learning. Don’t get easily discouraged by setbacks.
If you consider being in the market as having open positions, I can say that I’m in the markets 24/7. However, when it comes to looking at the charts, I don’t spend too much time on them because it can become confusing after a while and lead to doubt about whether to open a position or not. First and foremost, you need to find your strategy. Try everything possible on a demo account and see which one works best for you. Then, practice it consistently until you can make decisions with just a few minutes of looking at the charts.
I hope and trust that’s still what it means! (What else could it mean??). 
I suppose I could add that when I look at the D1 charts after the NY close, I note on a spreadsheet the 7 or 8 things I am interested to see on each pair’s charts. This allows me to rank the best trades and track which pairs I have positions in, and which currencies. I spend about the same time reviewing the spreadsheet as I do on the charts, which isn’t very long - I don’t want 28 positions open at the same time and it takes a long time for a pair to improve its TA so it jumps from the worst section to the best seciton.
As an example, JPY has been a sell and USD a buy for such a long time: EUR has not been either often: AUD or CHF can be either a convincing buy or sell and they can swap from top to bottom on the spreadsheet pretty quickly.
Hmmm. 
In the beginning, I used to spend like at least 3-5 hours a day watching my charts. Or, I just have the tab open for it on my screen even if I’m doing other things. But I understand that we have different circumstances and life happens. So, recently, I spend just around 2 hrs on my charts. 
Looking at the charts!
