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!
It all depends on your trading method. After all, there are both medium- and long-term traders, as well as those traders who trade intraday. Therefore, the first traders are not in the market often, they only monitor their previously established transactions and wait for further price movement in the direction of the general trend. But intraday traders can make many transactions during the day, so they spend hours in the market and make frequent trades.
Exactly the opposite, actually: the long-term traders are typically in the market most.
I think you probably misunderstood what “in the market” means. It means “having one or more open positions.”
I’m a long-term trader, I only set entry prices, stop-losses, TP prices and pyramid prices using D1 only.
I am in front of the screen not much at all. But my positions run for days, maybe 2-3 weeks. The longer the better.
It’s not often that I don’t have positions open. I trade stocks as well so my watch lists are pretty extensive.
I am not opposed to holding positions for weeks at a time, I’m also not opposed to holding them for a few hours at a time either, it all depends on what the market wants to do and what works with my strategy.
I don’t see any point in labeling myself as a scalper, intra-day trader or swing trader, although the majority of my trades fall into the latter category due to my full-time job. But since I set my orders at night and on the weekends I don’t need to monitor them during the day.
There must be many different types of traders. I am a very short term scalper with a small account. I treat my account as the best video game around and attempt to make some money as a job.
I am long retired from normal employment and have a great deal of time to watch the market. I trade on the Dax40 from 7 am to about 8 pm Monday to Friday. I normally use the 1 min time chart and look up other times during the day to watch trends. For trade entries I look for the second candle after a turn and TP above £1.50. I work on the premise of “What goes up, will come down, and vice versa” (over time). I do not use TP’s or SL’s as I have found that they are the quickest way to give your money away.
On a £4,000 balance, I look for a daily increase of £20 on a slow day to £100 + on a nice volatile day with between 20 and 60 trades per day. I normally use up to 50% of the weekly profit to “buy” back outstanding trades before close on Friday to cut the “hangover” for the weekend. This approach has,so far , been successful.
I have been trading for over 15 years on and off. I strictly stick to the adage to “Only trade with what you can afford to lose”.
1-4 hours daily analyzing charts, adjusting to personal schedules and strategies. Consistency matters more than duration. Keep learning and practicing.
