I’ve been learning about stock and forex trading since November and have made some progress—I’ve passed two prop firm challenges and even got a payout before (unfortunately) blowing the last account.
I’m constantly learning, backtesting my ideas, and taking things slow. Trading has been really engaging, and I enjoy the process.
Lately, though, I’ve felt a bit scattered—my trading style keeps shifting day by day, and I realized I need to stick to one approach and refine it for consistency. Right now, I trade on the 1M to 15M timeframes, focusing on pattern recognition and trend-following.
It works decently, but I’m wondering if this is sustainable long-term. I’m concerned that:
Maybe most traders don’t rely on such low timeframes.
Position sizing and risk management might be trickier with the noise.
I could be missing bigger trends by not zooming out.
So, I’m considering moving to higher timeframes (1H-4H) to give my trades more “breath” and potentially catch stronger trends earlier. Has anyone made a similar switch?
Additionaly, I always have to stay close to my positions to adapt my SL/TP accordingly. However, having a full time - really busy - job, I cannot afford to stay close all day long and often find myself not monitoring those well enough…
I totally get where you’re coming from; I’ve been in a similar place with trading. Switching to higher timeframes was a game-changer for me. My trades felt more stable. I wasn’t getting whipsawed by every little price movement. Plus, I could give my trades more room to breathe, as you mentioned, and that made a huge difference. I didn’t have to be on my screen every second of the day, which was a big win since I have a full-time job too. I could just check in a couple of times a day and make adjustments when needed.
The key thing I learned was that position sizing and risk management become a lot easier with higher timeframes. There’s less “noise” to manage, and it gives you a bit more breathing room to let the market play out. I know it can be tempting to focus on the small-time frames for quick profits, but for long-term consistency, the higher timeframes tend to give you stronger, more reliable trends.
That said, the switch to higher timeframes didn’t happen overnight for me. At first, I felt like I was missing out on opportunities, but over time, I started to realize that trading in the higher timeframes allowed me to spot much bigger trends and avoid those random pullbacks that would mess with my strategy on the lower timeframes.
Of course, there’s a bit of a trade-off. You’re holding trades longer, so your risk management has to be tight, and you’re less involved in the day-to-day. But honestly, once I embraced that slower pace, it really helped me find consistency. Plus, the time spent away from the screen actually made me less emotionally attached to each trade.
Transitioning to higher timeframes (1H-4H) requires a thoughtful approach. It’s crucial to thoroughly backtest your strategies on these timeframes, paying close attention to entry rules, stop-loss placement, and take-profit targets and remember that adjusting to a new trading style takes time, so be patient and focus on learning and refining your approach.
Hey! I read in your post that you started in November. I am also in the (VERY) initial phases of trading. Could you please share how you started learning? Thx
I do the same as you but on faster charts than you.
They don’t, I think. That doesn’t concern me at all. Most traders aren’t profitable, are they? Doing something different from them is maybe more likely to help than to hinder?
That’s true, but you take that into account and allow for it when choosing your chart-speed, don’t you?
That’s true, but the idea is that you more than make up in trade frequency what you lose from that, surely?
If a market moves 60 pips in a day, someone trading from daily charts can make only 60 pips (maximum), that day.
Someone trading from 10-minute charts might make 6 pips 20 times over, as prices oscillate.
Prices always oscillate, to some extent, don’t they?
People who imagine that prices move unidirectionally have never paid attention to a fast tick chart, fast volume chart, fast renko chart or fast range-bar chart.
There isn’t a single “right answer”: it’s about what suits the individual.
