im new to this and am trying to work out the best way to trade.
if i am planning on making trades for 4 hours a day, and want to use candle stick charts as a basis for trading what is the best time frame for me to use to make decisions based on the candles. M1, M5, M30 etc.
e.g. i see a hanging man at the top of an uptrend in M1 followed by a candle following the down trend but in M5 i do not. should i start selling the currency based on M1?
also how long should you hang onto currencies in day trading is it best to hang on all day if the trend seems stable enough?
There’s a lot of good threads at babypips that will get new traders started with good information. For day trading esp you can check out InnerCircleTrader’s thread What Every New & Or Aspiring Forex Trader… Still Wants To Know. But trading the ultra short time frames can be especially tricky.
trading japanese candlesticks in the 1M chart is really difficult, you need a context to trade the patterns. My advice is that you use at least the 1H. First you have to master your trading in larger timeframes.
I’ll echo this response. I am new too and one thing I can say is that you should start at the 1D vs. smaller time frames. There’s less volatility and you have the opportunity to be more selective with your trades when you can focus on ideal setups and not worry as much about quick changes in the charts.
Yup another echo, patterns become more reliable on the larger time frames, but try not to rely solely on the candle stick pattern, there are other areas that need attention, such as Support and resistance…