GIVEAWAY: If you only have 1 hour a day to trade, what should your top 3 priorities be?

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Currency pairs only move so much per day. If you only have one hour to trade, as many have pointed out here, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be sitting in front of your trade station when that movement happens. One way to work around that challenge is to favor longer timeframes and trends as has been mentioned.

Another way is go robot. Learn to code your own expert advisor or trading script/system, and let the computer do the work for you. Spend your one hour per day looking over journal logs to make sure everything is working as expected, examine trade logs, and kick off extensive back tests to determine the best configurations for your bot.

The 3 priorities should be the things you focus on outside of that precious one hour:

1- Learn to code. Do research on the various languages and approaches that are popular out there. It could be MQL 4 or 5, It could be Python making API calls to your broker. I haven’t used it, but I believe ninjatrader has a “ninjascript”, and there are many other ways to program automated trading bots. Find the approach that suits you best and become as proficient as you can in it. There’s plenty of free training material and guides out there.

2- Find a solid, simple, consistent strategy and codify it. This sounds like the easy part, but it’s actually the hardest part. There are so many different Forex trading strategies; different ways to trade range and trending environments, indicators, price action, retracements, patterns, limitless possibilities. Do a bunch of reading here at BP. You’re sure to find something that works for you if you keep at it!

3- Find creative ways and times to learn. I used to have to regularly make the 4 hour drive between St. Louis and Kansas City for business. I used it as a great opportunity to consume audio books on trading. The same thing might apply to a nice long jog or walk during your regularly-scheduled exercise time, mowing the lawn, etc. If you look for them, you can find all sorts of chances to Forex your brain while your body is busy with something else.

The good news is, solving this problem will serve you even when you do have more than 1 hour to trade. Not only will your robot not have your emotional trading problems, you have better things to do, like make drinks and watch it trade for you! Cheers and good luck!

Edit - if you’re reading this thinking, “yeah great but I’m no computer programmer!”, we will not tolerate that kind of negative self-talk! You simply forgot the word “yet” at the end of that sentence. It’s not as hard as you think it is. I’m a really simple country boy redneck sort of creature and I learned MQL4 just by forcing myself through the free e-book they host on the Metatrader site. You can learn this. Yes, you. They call it a language for a reason!

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Eleven years at school, two years at college, three years at university, and all I needed to do to learn how to draw a horizontal line— Tom Dante.

  1. I’m a morning guy. Wake up and make my bed. Which is my first daily achievement. Which leads to walking for five kilometers, as my second achievment. Now I’m in the right achievment mindset.

  2. Read the news, focus on financial events. Walk downstairs to the cellar, enter, and close the door, spray mosquitos, turn on my two computers and one big screen, sit down and select smooth jazz guitar music - then open my two live accounts and one FTMO demo. Now I’m in the Zone.

The most important rule of trading is to play great defence, not great offence – Paul Tudor Jones

  1. My Ichimoku trending set up sees me through 28 FX pairs in my alloted hour.

It’s that simple.

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  • Skim over forex pairs and see which ones are close to fulfilling my trade entry conditions.
  • Mark them and maybe add alerts.
  • Enter trades for which these conditions are already satisfied.
  • Sometimes exit trades I’m certain of losing.

Bonus:
Close the trading terminal and try to keep busy/sleep for the remaining 23 hours of the day.

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If I only had an hour per day to trade it would be around the NYSE Close. I would focus on forex D1 charts, spot the uptrends and downtrends using the slopes of the 20 and 50EMA’s, and set buy or sell orders behind the current price on each of these, close the positions which have made 3 consecutive “with-trend” closes, then go and pour a glass of good wine.

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-analyse on 15M and 30M
-Checkout 3bulls news event on the pairs(preferably volatile pairs)
-lookout for an entry on session open/interception

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Top 3 priorities!
1: Check all relevant news for the market of interest. Usually normal newswires, several trading groups hot event list as such and global activity.

2: Once I digest #1 and have a broad picture of interesting directions; I will determine where my day is going depending on long term and short term goals.

3: Once I have determined to focus on long or short term I will execute the appropriate trading plan accordingly. I love short term collection; but for sanity I make sure I have a balanced long term on going.

Ultimately love the market, love the opportunity, do your homework, listen to the pros who have lived it in great success and failure. Never open your risk beyond your plan. It is easy to chase ups and downs with the adrenaline and energy that comes from success and unfortunately seek to appease that empty sick feeling when we make a mistake or a market completely dumps your direction. Make sure your profit loss targets are in your comfort zone and when a trade moves out of either side let your AI close the trades.

Im still a geek nerd wanna be trader. Wish everyone extreme success!!!
Paul

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  1. Identify your one hour strategy
  2. Trade only a few assets
  3. Depend on signals from trusted sources
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  1. Trade the Daily Chart
    Trading the daily chart gives you so many advantages. It will reduce a lot of noise especially if there are news events happening during the day. 1 hour before daily candle closes is the time to trade, either to open, close, or manage running trade. And remember don’t do trade after the market opens, because spreads are insane, after all, one hour before market closes, usually, there will be no crazy moves, so expect the same closing price between the daily candle closure and 1 hour before daily candle closure.

  2. Strategy
    Using daily charts have no different from any other timeframes, you’re just moving into a higher timeframe. Of course it will make your trade longer to finish, but keep in mind that it also gives you a bigger pips to catch. So it doesn’t matter if you are a price action trader or an indicator-heavy algorithm trader. Just analyze the charts 1 hour before the market closes and scroll through all pairs that you trade if there are any opportunities.

  3. Big News Event
    If you still want to consider news, the most important thing you need to be aware of is a big news event. For example, FOMC, NFP, presidential election. You can check forexfactory and if there any kind of that news on some currency, you can skip the currency for the next day. Because trading the news would be dangerous for our trade, as the price will going up and down haphazardly, so the best solution is not to trade it. So you can avoid that currency only for one day.

The most important thing is you have backtested your strategy, either it’s price action or indicator algorithm, as long as you’ve backtested it, and know its performance is what you want, then go follow your system and trade!

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My first post even though I have been a babypips member for ages…it is never too late!

Step 1: After NY daily close (10pm GMT), identify the trending Major/Minor pairs using the TradingView Forex Screener in daily timeframe
My trend template:
SMA20 above SMA50
Last Price above SMA50

Step 2: Identify the pairs that have pulled back, and testing daily support/resistance and/or SMAs in daily timeframe

Step 3: Shortlist the pairs if:
SMA20/50/200 are trending in the same direction;
There is no major news related to the currency on the following day; and
The pairs offer favourable Risk:Reward

Step 4: Hide SMAs (TradingView has the option to hide the indicator) and review shortlisted pairs between 6am and 6pm GMT after 4hours candle close

Step 5:
BUY @ Market Order if:
Double bottom pattern and/or Bullish engulfing candles formed at daily support in 4hrs in the pair trending up in daily
Stoch is oversold in 4hrs
Favourable Risk:Reward

SELL @ Market Order if:
Double top pattern and/or Bearish engulfing candles formed at daily resistance in 4hrs in the pair trending down in daily
Stoch is overbought in 4hrs
Favourable Risk:Reward

This is work in progress but provides good overall framework for me. It does not take me more than an hour on daily basis, however time can be further reduced by skipping step 4 and focusing on daily timeframe.

Thanks for reading and I welcome feedback/suggestions.

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-Scan the pairs that interest you the most
-Look at Daily for trend
-Look at Price action on H4 and use H1 for entry
-Let price move into your perfect setup
-Set price alerts so you know when price is moving to where you want it.
-Enter when your perfect setup appears
-Ensure good risk management. (% of capital willing to lose)
-Identify TP ( set one optional or set alerts and see what price is doing. Maybe you caught a runner)

Be PATIENT
Let it play out!

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a very quick one:
1.Since swing trading requires little time to monitor, that should be the trading style you opt for,
2. minimize the number of charts you’re watching out for and
3. pick few pairs with very good setups to watch out for since you don’t have enough time to scroll through tons of charts_If possible specialize on a particular setup or pair.

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priority A, to pick the hour to trade = volume&volatility…

priority B, pick 1 or 2 pairs = focus

priority C , strict feasible goal and risk

So goal 10-15 pips /max risk 10 pips

Choose between following 3 windows, for optimal 1 hour :
(pre) NewYork open (together with London) = max volume: trade window 3-4 hours

(Pre)London - open : trade window 3 hours

London close: trade window 1.5 hours

So my 1-hour choice would be:

1/2 hour before till 1/2 hour after London Open
On GBP-pair

15min before NY open on gold or US30

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If I only had 1hr to trade, I would use it to set up and briefly observe the trade. The set up would be 45 minutes and observations would be 15 minutes. Then, after an hour, I would leave my trade run on its own on a one hour time frame. As for me, 1hr is specifically for set up and brief observations. The following is how I would use that 1hr:

#1. I would quickly review 3 of my favorite currency pairs, and pick only one pair, which seems to be doing well regarding my trading strategy. For example, if I use trend following strategy, I would pick a currency that seems to be more trendy and avoid the currency, which is in a range or highly volatile. I would do this in about 5 minutes.

#2. Then, I would quickly do the technical, fundamental, and sentimental analysis of the currency pairs. I would spend about 10-15 minutes running through data from my favorite websites like forex factory, my forexbook, and babypips.com, etc.

#3. I would then quickly and carefully set up my trading plan. I would enter into my trading journal and platform the following:

  • my trading strategy and time frame. Here, I would ensure that I counter check the trends available using moving averages, parabolic sars, and/or trendlines. I would check the higher time frame to verify the structure, and use lower time frame for entries and exits.
  • my position size, entries, and exits. I would enter my position size first. For example, I would enter a one percent position size (0.01) for risk management. Then, I would look at the stage at which I am in the price movement to make better entries and exits. So, for entries, I would choose the best two order types depending on the price movement stage. For example, if I’m at the distribution stage which is consolidated, I would set up both the sell and buy order entries. But before ordering, I would confirm these positions using moving averages, candlestick patterns, support and resistence lines and indicators such as the volume, Stochastic, and obv. So for exits, I would set up the stop losses at least 10 pips below/above the entry depending on where the price movement is at. Then, I would enter my take profits 1, 2, and 3. I would use 1:1 ratio reward, and increase it at each additional take profit level. I would do the set up in 20 minutes.
  • my emotions. I would check and enter my emotions at the start and end of trading.
  • my observations. I take the last 15 minutes to observe whether the trade is going in line with my set up.
  • my duration. As said earlier, for me the 1hr is great for setting up the trade and observing it only at the onset.
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1 Put a value on that hour of time for yourself, so you know the total cost of ownership of trading, being the profit from your trades minus the opportunity cost of the hour you are limited to for trading.
2 Complete a trading plan that has as a target profit for the year an acceptable return on your capital investment PLUS 250 hours representing the working days you have spent trading
3 Determine from the capital you are prepared to invest in your trading whether this is an achievable goal that your psychology can handle.

Trade or No Trade - decision point. If it is no trade, you get a precious hour back for every day of your life. Before deciding, read Tim Ferriss The Four Hour Work Week.

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The wait is finally over!

We now have our forum giveaway winners!

A big thank you to everyone who participated and shared their thoughts on our giveaway question! We hope that these responses can serve as guides for our forex trading newbies, especially those who are trying out forex as a side hustle! Good luck!

And speaking of luck, we’re starting off our giveaway winners announcement with our lucky winner, selected randomly from our pool of entries!

Congratulations, to @AVSH!

For being a TL2 member, you will be receiving $25 worth of Amazon gift card!

Moving on, we have the BabyPips Community’s choice. Garnering the most number of likes on their response…

Congratulations to @SovoS!

For being a TL3 member, you will be receiving $50 worth of Amazon gift card!

Last but definitely not least, we have the BabyPips Team’s Choice! With so many great and enlightening responses, our team had a tough time picking our favorite. However, after much deliberation, we have chosen one that stood out.

Congratulations to @MattyMoney!

For being a TL3 member, you will be receiving $50 worth of Amazon gift card!

Once again, thank you to everyone who participated! And congratulations to all of the winners! I will be reaching out to you shortly to ask for your email addresses.

*Please be reminded that failure to respond within 7 days will result in automatic disqualification.

Not so lucky with this one? No need to worry! We’re cooking up even more exciting things so stay tuned for those!

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comgrats to the winners. all great answers deserving to win !

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Thank you @Penelopip and Babypips, and a very special thanks to all those that gave their “likes”! :smiley: and best wishes to you all with your trading :+1:

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Wow, I’m the lucky winner :smiley:

Thank you @Penelopip and the babypips community.

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Congratulations to the winners╰(⸝⸝⸝´꒳`⸝⸝⸝)╯

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Some really great answers in here!

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