Hi guys, I currently hold a job with office hours but without internet access. I will be going on to further my studies fulltime and will probably only be able to commit at most 2 hours per day to trading however. I have about $10k in capital for trading that I can sort of afford to lose (since I’m still a student - don’t really need to pay bills or anything yet, thankfully) What time frame should I be looking at? 15min? Thanks for the help!
I have no idea what experience level you are, but I would probably say start small and build your way up with your capital. Don’t put it all in 1 lump sum. Start with a few hundred and after every profitable month add 1-2k, personally that’s what I did. The lessons you learn are the same just cheaper. If you have zero experience then stick to demo at least at first.
But if your only able to commit 2 hours a day, say 1 in the morning and 1 at night to check or manage your trades. I would say stick to the daily and 4H time frames. Even 1H will require you to check it at least once during the day, which you said you are unable to do. A lot of the traders here think starting at the higher TFs are better for beginners anyway. I personally spend a lot of time on the daily-4h-1h myself and can say there are plenty of good opportunities, for my system anyway.
Thanks for the response. I have 0 experience at the moment, still going through the school of pips. Hmm my 2 hours will probably be at night at the moment though. Once I start my studies in August next year I should be able to check my trades more often throughout the day as I’ll have internet connection throughout, but probably still only be able to spend a few hours properly monitoring the markets.
Oh yes stick to demo for certain then. Finish the school which is basically just a primer. You have a long road ahead of you mate. Its very rewarding but instead of spending 2 hours trading you should probably be better spent studying at first. Then begin to demo trade. A hour benchmark that i have seen floating around this board is, 2000 hours to get your feet under you, 5000 hours to get to be Break even or moderately profitable, 10000 for real knowledge and experience for constant profitability. So i would advise you until you really get a solid understanding of trading and determine what type of trader you are and how you want to trade you just keep that capital in the back ground. Put it in something safe and get a small % off it. Until you are truly ready. Welcome to the path my friend, i hope i didnt discourage you. But it is truly worth it in the end.
Yeah, I’ll be entering college so I just hope to be able to make a bit of money on the side then, and hopefully by the time I’m done with college I can be making a fair amount. Can you recommend some must-reads for “part-time” trading? Some books I’ve got lined up are the candlestick books by Steve Nison. I briefly read Van Tharp’s book, will read it again when I’ve got time. I’ve also gotten my hands on books by Alexander Elder. I totally understand it’s a long journey, just wish I had gotten down to starting properly much earlier.
I think we all wished we started years ago. LOL. oh those are great authors by the way. I have read all of Nison and some elder books and really enjoyed them. Never read Van Tharp but heard good things. There are so many books out there but here are some of my favorites, Brett Steenbarger enhancing trader performance, reminiscences of a stock operator, and I just finished this book this weekend it was pretty good too Beat the Forex Dealer. Actually Eremarket ( a pro trader here on babypips) just started a book club. So that might be cool to get into the book they are reading is Market Wizards by Jack Schwagger, which is an amazing book as well. Trust me you will never stop reading.
Yeah. My plan is to read enough to be able to decide on a system that I feel comfortable with - what indicators I would want to use, how I’m going to balance TA with FA, proper risk management etc, and then try it out demo trading. I’m also setting my demo trading account capital to that which I’m going to start live trading with, so that I get a feel for how big my orders should be, how much I should expect to make.
I’ll try to start on some of the books I mentioned earlier and perhaps others brought up by yourself and Eremarket (I just checked him and Innercircle out, they scare me with their mastery… I’m sure they have a lot of good stuff to teach but it feels a little overwhelming at the moment) once I’m done with babypips school. Thanks for your help, I’ll always be open to suggestions and any tips I could get.
Mac welcome to babypips. I am a part time trader. The only advise I can give is to figure out what Sessions you will be able to trade and build a strategy around that session. I will be the first to tell you not all sessions are created equal. You have the Asian session witch has very low volatility and dont like to make bigs moves into uncharted waters. Then you got London session that likes to make big moves and often witch is most traders session of choice as it overlaps with the NY session. Both London and NY sessions have the most volatility letting you catch some pretty big moves.
It is my opinion that you must understand how each sessions likes to move before you can figure out what type of trader you are. Reason being if you can only trade the Asian session then you will mostly trade range based systems on the lower time frames. Don’t just think that because you are trading smaller moves you are going to make smaller amounts of money. That is simply not true but I wont get into that today. Now if you prefer to trade higher time frames on the Asian session then this will greatly change your strategy when placing a trade. You will now be leaving trades open for longer periods of time and will not always be there to monitor your trade. Here is where you will have to have faith in your stoploss. Since your trade will be open longer your trades will often go into the London and NY sessions. You will have to account for that when placing a trade. So your trade dont go well in the Asian session only to be stopped out in the London session.
It is much more difficult to trade part time as you will often miss trade setups. This is where you will need to master the art of patience. Patience will be your best friend if you do not use it the markets will eat you alive. Its tough in the beginning feeling as though you are missing all the trade setups out there due to not being able to be at the computer for more than a couple hours. Its a rough spot to be in trust me been there done that and can show you the vouchers to prove it. Just stay focused dont just trade because you feel you have to. Trades will come to you. You dont have to go hunting for them. Wish you the best. Have fun and you will figure out what you need to do in time.
3 Likes
Hi, thanks for your input. For the next 8 months I will be able to trade around 8-11pm GMT+8 (which is 7-10am EST). Which session would that fall under? I would like to try to close my trades within the day as I don’t fully understand the concept of rollovers yet.
Do you suggest reading up a lot and then demo-trading, or should I kinda jump right into it once I have a bit of knowledge and then learn along the way?
Great work Buddy. Absolutely dilighted by the work you shared. Looking forward for reading from you.
No no no no no - don’t start on 15 minute charts.
You’ve got a decent grub stake of 10K and very little time to trade full time
The question is why would you want to trade full time anyway? To make your broker more profits?
Forget the stupid 15 minute timeframe and concentrate on daily charts.
Don’t even think about 15 min charts until you are profitable on the daily
Other point - after demo trading for a bit then only trade with a small fraction of your stake - because there is still a good chance you will mess up any way
1 Like
I always look upto your work, it's great reading you.I started forex trading as an additional source of income. But as I saw the potential in the market, I worked harder and left my 9-5 job to do it full-time. I have been making a living through forex trading for the last few years.
Thank you for your piece of advice. Since I get less time to manage trades so I will stick to 4H time frames just and see how that works for me
15 minutes should work fine, I guess.