Hello Forex Traders,
I trade six currency pairs, 1 hour charts, support and resistance with price action signals.
Trading is going well. First thing in the morning I look for potential trades within the next 24 hours and set price alerts.
I then sit and do nothing sometimes for hours on end… Once the price alerts are hit I obviously place orders and open positions but sometimes this can take hours on end.
Am I missing something? Does anyone else find they have a lot of time on their hands?
You say your trading is going well. This is due, no doubt, to the fact that you are selective and do not trade just to trade. Profitable trading is just as you described, boring and dull.
If you want excitement take up skydiving or bull riding. If you want to be a profitable trader, get used to watching paint dry 
They have a bunch of trading documentaries on Hulu and other places. If you google “trading documentaries” you’ll find a list of them at the other [B]F[/B]orex [B]F[/B]orum which is pretty extensive.
Anyway…I went on a spree watching these things and in one of the little clip interviews (It was with some guy who made a bunch of money in commodities I think) this old, bald trader said that one of the things that attracted him to trading is that it is a profession which encourages “abject laziness”. He didn’t expound on that point but I took it to mean that you do a LOT of sitting around and either doing evaluations or just plain out waiting instead of always trying to “do-do-do” and be as productive as possible with every working hour as is the goal of every employer for all their employees in all traditional businesses.
From a personal standpoint, my system is traded on the 15-minute charts for a total of 12 hours p/day. I only make decisions on entering a trader at the last 2-minutes of each 15 minute bar though. This means that I’m “tied” to the computer and have to be available for the entire 12 hour period but that I’m only really “working” for 2 out of every 15 minutes. This means that I’m only “working” for about 96 minutes out of a 12-hour day…or about 1.5 hours.
I have a trade manager pull me out of the trades the same way every time, so I don’t have to worry about anything other than taking entries when the signal is present which means that watching the charts once a trade is in play is a waste of time. It’s going to do what it’s going to do. So I shrink down the chart and take that 13 minute block and do something else with it. I’ll do a round of kettlebell swings and then read a book. As I’m still finishing up my degree I can polish off some homework or a paper. I can read a hunting magazine. I can prep lunch or use the restroom. As long as I’m in front of the computer when the bar is closing out I’m good.
This really suits my personality and I can’t imagine that I’d have this type of freedom if I was working for some big investment bank or something. Imagine what they’d do if some guy looked at the screen every 15 minutes and then went back to reading a book or a magazine. I bet they’d frown upon the process even if I was fantastically profitable for the company. They’d look at is as laziness which might be catching to others in the group or whatever. Trading might reward abject laziness…but that doesn’t mean that it’s smiled upon by those in the trading world. Maybe that’s why so many people fail. They feel that they always have to be “doing” something in order to justify the money they earn. Mr. Williams touches on this in both of his seminal books on trading psychology.