Hi, I apologize if this has been asked before. I wasn’t able to find any answer with my searches. I live in EST and I work full time so I anticipate trading either in the evening on the Tokyo market or in early morning in London. Probably not both as that would just be too much.
Now, I’ve heard people say that trading only a few hours a day will take a long time to get good at it, and I’m ok with that. My problem is that I’m having trouble finding a suitable strategy. There are plenty in these forums, but so many are all based on “Buy when indicator X shows a trend. Sell when indicator Y shows another trend.” (oversimplification, yes). Problem is that indicators can show a signal any time. And I can’t be on-call for Forex round-the-clock (though I know some people do)
So what can you recommend? I see myself swing trading because of this restriction. So I’d be holding overnight, but I’d be really worried about what happens when I’m not watching. I guess I’d need clear and tight stops and limits because I can’t be sitting in front of the charts watching for indicators all the time. But if I hold for longer periods of time, don’t my stops and profit-taking levels have to be larger?
This post has been long. Let me know what you think. Things like Cowabunga look interesting, but they just don’t seem practical for someone who can only trade a few hours a day. What happens if the sell signal comes while I’m at work. Now if the platform could detect a signal and issue a sell for me… not even sure if that’s possible.
Thanks in advance for any advice on where to look for a system.
Try the 8and8 strategy on this site. Just use the search function to find it. It’s based on daily charts and look at the Ingot strategy too. It’s based on daily and weekly charts. The one ‘problem’ with the 8and8 strategy is that it uses MT4 which your broker may or maynot support. You can also do the strategy manually since your only taking a measure once a day. I think you can apply a lot of strategies just using the daily charts.
Also go through the babypips school. It appears from some of your questions your quite new to this. Also research limit orders, that’s how you safeguard a position without being around to watch it. There is also a thread on this exact question with some good comments. Hope this helps.
The “Cornflower” strategy by Lever70 and discussed amply on FF’s forum is especially good for evening Asian trading. Give it a look, read TWICE, download the later pdf, and demo 1st. It may just be your answer.
dhannum - I would be careful about the swing trading if I were you. If you decide to go that route, you’ll want a strategy with very specific exit points since you’ll struggle to trail your stops and things like that with your job.
You should consider day trading your available timeframe, whichever you choose, and/or position trading based on daily data. The former will give you a lot of practice and you won’t have to worry about the position adjustments of swing trades. The latter will require only daily looks at the market.
Thank you all for your help. I’m definitely reading up on the babypips school (graduated from high school:) ) and reading a lot to understand the systems, platforms, and logistics of how this thing works. Don’t worry, it’ll be a long while before I put real money on this
If I can ask another question: Can I trade any market (e.g. US, Europe, Asia) with any broker? I think I know what broker I want, but I want to ensure that I’m going to be able to trade at any hour, whenever I decide that will be. I couldn’t find a clear answer. I hear things about positions “rolling over” at night, which confuses me.
Yes, 24-hour is just that…24H…it’s across the board for every currency broker. Some of them close a little latter or earlier prior to the weekend and holidays but that’s the only difference so you’ll have plenty of time to make your moves.
The simple def. of positions rolling over are swap rates. All I really know is that depending on if I’m long or short a pair, I will either have positive or negative swap rates, which is the extra cost(or benefit) of rolling a position over before the start of the new day. you gain or lose an extra pip everyday the pair “rollsover”. Someone else here could touch up on this, or better yet, you can save yourself the time and use the search feature above
I hear things about positions “rolling over” at night, which confuses me.
All open positions are closed at the end of the day, 1700hrs NY time,
2200hrs GMT, the interest on the positions calculated whether +ve or
-ve, then re-opened again, this is usually instantaneous.
A list of the calculations can be found somewhere on your brokers site,
but basically on long positions, if the base currency interest is greater
than the quote currency ie GBP/JPY (5.5%/0.5%) then you have a +ve
carry or swap.
This is not true of all brokers. Oanda, for example, using 1600 NY. Then again, they also do continuous interest calculations. Regardless, you need to check the specifics with your broker of choice.
