Maybe it's just about the day of the week - a beginner's experience

Trading Discussion
1

I’ve been trading for a couple of months now, borrowing ideas for trading systems from various forums, and had some good successful runs where I would increase the demo account balance by 50% in one day.

Then it would all go wrong and I would lose that profit the following day. I’m using quite a high leverage and lot size, in order to stress-test my ideas, so these bigger profits and losses would be expected.

Today being a Friday I’ve come to expect that trading would be more difficult, and sure enough all of my trusty trading systems broke down and I lost a quarter of the demo account balance today.

Monday this week was also very challenging, but then Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were a breeze, with nice predictable trends on most of the major pairs.

Every week it seems to be the same pattern: Monday is bad, Tuesday is good, Wednesday is great, Thursday is good, and Friday is bad.

On the three good days you can clearly see the trends underway, and the retracements are also quite obvious on M5 charts, so you can enter the trend at the right time.

The only issue is when to exit the trend and close your position, so I use a range of indicators (EMAs, Bollinger, Fibonacci) which together give a good picture of trends breaking down or reversing.

On the two bad days the trends only last for a short time, and break down more sporadically, and even the periods of ranging are very chaotic.

Have other people here found the same pattern, between trading success and the day of the week, somewhat regardless of the trading system being used?

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2

I have limited time on day-trading so far (spent years on longer-term stuff but dabbling with so-called scalping now) but have to agree, Mondays and Fridays are marginal, the main business for us will be the mid-week days.

But today was NFPR - wish I’d stayed out.

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3

Yes today was really challenging. I made some 1 pip profit positions around lunchtime but then misread the really short-lived trends that occurred.

I wonder what drives the market on Mondays and Fridays; maybe it’s purely driven by people haphazardly losing their money.

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yea, NFP was stupid today, I should have stayed out myself, took a small loss on EU, but made it back on AUDJPY

5

Glad that you noticed. This is the beauty of analysing your trading. You can clearly see when and why you’re losing money. Just stop trading those days and you’ll be profitable.

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Consider the anatomy of a candlestick. You see wicks on either end and a body in to middle (most of the time). For a weekly candle, the wicks are usually formed on Mondays and Fridays. Tuesdays and Thursdays is when you will see the highs or lows form. That’s the reason that you perceive Mon and Fri to be difficult trading days. Given the above revisit your trades and see what you might have done differently.

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I had scrapped a few dollars for me then ended up losing 4 times as much. I’m angry with myself. Fridays could be somehow sloppy.

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8

Thank you for confirming my thoughts regarding Monday and Friday trading days.
Pip blessings to you!

9

Trading off the breakout on a Monday is fairly good tip. Monday’s and Friday’s also make up a higher percentage of weekly highs and lows than the other days. If you look at a random week, notice how often a Monday or Friday is either the high or low of the week.

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Truth be told, I had a great day of trading today (Friday).

I don’t mean to be contrarian here. But please don’t buy into the notion that the day of the week maters one little bit-- it really doesn’t. I’ve been involved in several trading forums and it’s all the same.Traders claim that Tuesdays are the best. Some claim Wednesdays are the only days to trade. And yes, quite few traders just love Fridays. I personally remember a Monday several weeks back where I made the most pips on one trade I have ever made. And it was during the Asia session!

The point is you never know. Just take the opportunities as they come and don’t worry about when they happen. :+1:

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11

Its a matter of fact, that in general Mondays and Fridays have less traffic for intraday/or scalping.
BUT as i experienced it does not mean, that you can’t catch a rabbit also during these sessions, because markets are also pushed by sudden news release, and this can happen anytime. But in the long run those two days a quieter.

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12

from 15 april 2019 to 04 october 2019 with 100 eu real account
all trades opened and closed within a day
lev. 1/500 - lots 0,01 - martingale a few times.
the results are as follows;
monday -16,86 eu
tuesday +11,27 eu
wednesday +23,05 eu
thursday +16,80 eu
friday +1,59 eu
wish i didn’t trade on mondays!
and no need to get stressed on fridays.

13

Some objective data can be collected to show what sort of week it has been (this might be of no market-predictive value but could aid capital allocation).

Let’s assume in a consistent trend it should be relatively easier to make money without any special strategies. A consistent uptrend might be where the 20EMA is above the 50 and both are sloping upwards, vice versa for downtrends. And an energetically moving trend might be preferable to one that is trickling up/down: so check how many consecutive recent weekly bars overlap with the last one.

Of the 28 important forex pairs only 14 are in established consistent trends, highlighting in particular 5 USD longs and 5 JPY longs. But of the 14 trending pairs only 3 are moving energetically.

The average weekly bar overlap after this week across all 28 pairs is 7 weeks - meaning on average the last weekly bar overlaps the range of the previous 6. In the most general terms, this is a market going nowhere fast.

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14

I think that it is all part of experience to be gained on forex market. Sometimes markets are quite predictable and easy to trade, but in other times there are high challenges. Learn how to spot both

15

What are you talking about?