What Timeframe Do You Trade?

[Cloudninee]

Just thought I’d open a thread to get some opinion on the timeframe/chart that everyone is trading. Do you have a favourite chart that you trade on?

I will explain below my own personal opinion and how I trade. I am interested to see others’ responses.

DISCLAIMER
Before I go into my own explanation of how I trade, I just wanted to say that I am nowhere near being a professional trader. I have been trading for over 2 years now and I am profitable (approximately 10-15% return on capital every month, my earnings from forex pay all my bills and a bit of saving monthly) while still having a full-time job that I love, but I don’t consider myself a professional just yet as I am sure there are still many things to learn.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are literally hundreds if not thousands of ways you can trade. So nothing is wrong or right here, but rather this is just something that suits my own lifestyle. So take what I have to say with a grain of salt, but I do appreciate any inputs or feedbacks that others may have.

SO WHAT TIMEFRAME DO I TRADE?
I trade the daily timeframe. Yes, DAILY. To a lot of people out there, this will be a normal thing to say but I am very certain to many others as I have experienced in the past telling, this will be quite a shock. Many will say well how long do you have to bloody wait to enter a trade, do you hold a position for months on end? The answer is no, I can tell you that I enter trades every week regularly, make nice profits every month while still doing all other things that I love in lfie.

IT SUITS MY LIFESTYLE
Here is the very first reason why it’s great to trade the daily chart. I live in Queensland of Australia. So the market changes over at 7 am every day. All I do is wake up about 30-45 minutes before, maintain any open trades I have, and look through charts for any new opportunities - I trade 19 currency pairs (mostly majors and minors) and also gold. Once I have done that, I close off my computer and move on with my life doing whatever I want! I don’t have to stare at the computer for hours on end waiting for an opportunity and yet still may lose. This way, I enter the trade based on my own trusted strategy and I let the market do its thing and come back the next day and repeat.

In between, I am able to do all the things that I love: go to my fulltime job, spend time with my family and friends, play sports, exercise, see a movie, the options are endless!

On top of that, I can easily still trade even when I am traveling or is on a holiday (if I want to) because it does not take any longer than 30 to 45 minutes a day to do.

IT GIVES YOU TIME
You have heard the saying, you can make money all you want, you can lose money and make it back, but time is something you cannot get back once it’s gone.

Why do you think companies such as Uber, Amazon, and eBay are so successful? Yes, they facilitate a platform to buy and sell products however, that’s not why people go to them mainly. Why you ask? It’s because it saves people time. Instead of physically going shopping, you can do so on eBay and Amazon and it turns up at your door a few days later. Instead of driving or walking out to buy dinner or a meal? You can do so through Ubereats and it turns up at your door sometime later. All in all, people these days value their time.

So why not you? Ask yourself this question, would you rather spend your valuable time on doing the things you love? Or spend it in front of a computer hours on end? If you answer is yes to the first question, then the daily chart is your solution.

Then also ask yourself this question, can you do what you are doing on the shorter timeframe for the next 10 to 20 years? If the answer is no, then look into trading the daily chart.

Now you can argue that trading is what you love and you don’t mind it, you do you, like I said, nothing wrong with that as long as you enjoy it and it makes you happy and in the end, you are making a profit. It’s just not for me.

Not to mention, sitting for a long time can cause physical strains such as back, neck and shoulder pain. And what frustrates me more, is that you can wait for a long time for an opportunity, and yet still lose. Of course, my strategy would lose as well, but I don’t have to worry about it as I am trading based on a strategy that I know and trust to perform well over time, while my time waiting for the trade to eventuate is spent doing the things I love and enjoy life.

NEWS NO LONGER AFFECT YOU AS MUCH
Trading the daily chart takes away your worries about minor news as well as some not overly important major news. The candle takes 24 hours to form and the news form that candle itself, so you don’t have to be overly concerned.

Of course, I am still taking cautions when there NFP and a few other major news. But other than tightening my SL and TP points and be a touch more cautious when entering a trade, once again, I don’t have to worry about it too much.

This thread is already long enough, so I will stop it here. Feel free to ask me any questions you might have and I am always more than happy to answer them.

I am also keen to hear from others what they think of this as well as what their own opinion and take are on what chart/timeframe they use to trade.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing from you

Kind regards,
Cloud Nguyen

[FOREXunlimited]

Great intro! Glad to meet you. Care to share some portfolio stats? Interested in how many positions you’re putting on each month and what your accuracy, drawdown, risk of ruin look like.

[Yassine11]

Hello, good luck! Trading on the daily time frame What strategy do you rely on?

[Johnscott31]

Agree totally with everything said here. I too trade the daily timeframes with a few 8 hour charts thrown in for good measure.

Intraday trading offers so much promise but the reality is for the time and stress it takes the pay off is (IMO) not worth the effort.

Every year i spend a few days wishing I could pull out money on a daily basis as a day trader, and every time I sit at the screen I start thinking if I just held this for a few more days I’d make a much better R multiple.

The best day trades come when the best daily signals also come - so to me day trading is just a complete waste of time - even if your profitable at it.

The added problem with day trading is it’s so easy to slip into tilt mode. Yes that can happen on daily charts too but being able to sleep on it is a big plus for end of day traders.

I think the reason we want to day trade is it feels like we are being productive. Our society conditions us to be moving forward constantly and the idea that we can just sit back and make money doing very little is hard for us to believe.

So we go about trading thinking the more trades we make the more money we make - this is the biggest con there is - and one happily promoted by the Fx broker who are happy for us to be cannon fodder so they can earn their profits.

Trading on a daily timeframe is soooo nice. I really can’t fathom why anyone would want to trade on 5 minute or even hourly charts

Better go play a computer game instead.

One final point, yes there are many successful day traders, but they are still a rare breed. They process information very quickly, and have balls of steel - I have the uptmost respect for them.

But the vast majority of us are not cut out for this, certainly no beginner should start trading money on the lower timeframes until the are profitable on the daily.

And once profitable on the daily you want to ask yourself why go through all the hassle of day trading anyway?

[JeForceX]

Thank you for sharing your wisdom with the community!

Being a Full-Time Professional Trader, I trade on multiple timeframes (which I will explain why later):

• 4 Hours (H4): Position Trading Timeframe
• 1 Hour (H1): Swing Trading Timeframe
• 15 Minutes (M15): Intraday Trading Timeframe

Would I be contradicting myself if I am long on a Higher Timeframe but Short on a Lower Timeframe?
The answer is actually both “Yes” and “No”.

• Technically speaking, if I am Long and Short on the exact same currency pair, I am indeed contradicting myself.

• However, being Long on the Higher Timeframe (HTF) while being Short on the Lower Timeframe (LTF) does not mean I am wrong due to the fact that I could be trading the Impulse Wave on the HTF while trading the Correction Wave on the LTF.

• In this manner, I have created opportunities for myself to capture as many pips as possible regardless of whether the market is going up or down. However, prolonged sideway markets can cause a dent in my profits due to swap fees being piled up while the trade positions are still open.

• Even when I am sleeping for the night or out for groceries shopping at the local supermarket, I am passively generating profits from the Forex markets via my Swing and Position trades.

Closing Notes
Being a Full-Time Professional Trader, while Forex Trading can generate revenue to help pay the bills, it is not my one and only source of income as I have a diversified portfolio of other income sources such as Equities and REITs.

As a popular saying goes: “Never put all of the eggs in one basket.”

In the event that one asset class goes into a crash, I would only lose at most 20 - 25% of my net worth but will not be brought down into bankruptcy.

[Cloudninee]

Hey, thanks for your comment.

To be honest I have not been tracking fully but I am planning to as I am getting more and more serious about trading in the next few months.Will happily share my stats on here once I have gotten them together

[Cloudninee]

Hi Yassine11, thanks for your comment.

On the daily timeframe I am currently using a combnation of price action and bollinger bands as my trading strategy. It’s rather a lengthy one so I am planning to share the whole strategy here on Babypips in the coming time.

[Cloudninee]

Hey John,

I could not agree with you more and I am really happy to hear from a fellow trader who are on a somewhat similar journey with me.

All the best with your trading journey.

[Cloudninee]

Hey JeForceX, thanks for the comment. Lovely to hear you have it figured out and some very wise words from you there.

Wishing you all the best on your trading journey.

[Gracewilson22]

How can you say “NEWS NO LONGER AFFECT YOU AS MUCH”?

[Cloudninee]

Hey Gracewilson22, thank you for your comment.

The news is contained within the daily candle and the news actually forms the candle itself, so if it’s minor or not overly important news, if you are trading the daily timeframe, it does not affect you as much comparing to if you are trading at the 4 hour or espescially the lower timeframes like 1 hour, 30 minutes or lower, of which, you would need to be constantly watching your position to see what might happen when the news come.

Unless it’s NFP or other equally or bigger news, I don’t have to really care too much as it’s basically just moving the whole candle itself within the day.

If there are smaller news events that do not go my way, this is almost always okay, because if the direction I’m trading is technically correct, price will correct itself over time, and often sooner than later.

I can only do the above BECAUSE I am trading the daily timeframe. On smaller timeframes, even minor news sometimes can knock you out of your trade pretty easily.

[BRKT10]

I use multiple time frames to analyze, then, at which time frame there is a clear signal, I will trade at that time frame. rather than choosing a specific frame.

The use of multiple time frames will give you an overview of the market and the movements of the whole market.

[Cloudninee]

Hey BRKT10, thanks for your comment.

I must say I respect traders who can do what you do and I say that sincerely.

Call me lazy if you’d like and I don’t know if there are others out there like me but, it’s tiring and confusing and frustrating enough for me to find entries on one timeframe, looking at multiple timeframes like this just make my brain want to go into overdrive mode just by looking at it - and that’s not even looking at indicators and technical analysis yet hahahaa.

Lovely to hear though if that works well for you and that you are profitable and on top of all, comfortable with it.

All the best.

[Johnscott31]

@Cloudninee

I agree multiple timeframes is complete overkill to me.

[Innocent_Scar]

Day trading is perfect as you have said however i think that for a beginner (about 6 months into trading), they have to first get conversant with the lower time frames (4hrs and less) before moving to higher time frames(8hrs and more)

[Cloudninee]

Hey Innocent_Scar, thank you for your comment.

I will have to be honest and say I don’t agree with you 100%. I think for a beginner, it would be much more beneficial to get familiar with the longer timeframe (1D and 4H) before getting into the lower timeframes from 1H downwards.

Reason being price actions are often a lot more accurate on the higher timeframes and because the candle is form within 4 hours or a whole day, it gives the trader more time to analyse a trade before entering. Anything lower than the 4 hours will be very noisy which leads to a lot of false signals and for a beginner, that’s the killer and where a lot of bad trades can happen. Once again, more trades does not equal more profits.

Part of what you are saying is correct though. Practice makes perfect and for a beginner, if they have the time to try out stratgies and also practice in demo on the smaller timeframes, it would defnitely improve their skills overall. The smaller timeframe moves very quickly and it requires the trader to be very tough mentally as well as have good decision making skills to be able to scalp out money from the market.

I trade the daily timeframe but I don’t trade the weekly or monthly. Simply because I think they are too lengthy and they are too condensed when compare to a daily candle (too much news and information contained within one candle it’s harder to tell where the next one will go).

Appreciate your input though and best of luck on your trading journey

[FOREXunlimited]

Calculate them and you’ll get a better sense of your performance as a trader…

[comandantechanch]

Hi Cloudninee, just finished reading your London Breakout thread and enjoyed it. Made a couple profitable trades off it already which is great. I saw in the london thread you mentioned about only trading the daily timeframes so thought i would do a little digging to see if i could find out what your method was. Disappointed it wasn’t shared here but hoping you’ll be sharing soon! I trade the 4 hour and hourly timeframes at the moment. Been trading for about a year and was in a drawdown which i finally clawed my way back from yesterday so i’m hoping i can keep that going from here on in. How long have you been hitting 10-15% per month? Those are amazing figures. Something I can only dream of right now. Any advice you have i would be really interested to hear. IWhile i like analysing the charts i would definitely prefer an approach that involves checking once a day. I used to live in Brisbane myself as well up at Kangaroo Point. Loved living there and taking the wee city hopper boat to work every day. Would love to move back again. Thanks for your contributions so far anyway. All the best, Matt

[Cloudninee]

Yea will start doing so. I have only been recording my balance each month and how much profits I earned, that’s about it. Haven’t really gone into the specifics etc.

[Cloudninee]

Hey comandantechanch, lovely to hear from a fellow Queenslander

[Removed for Forums Policy violation]

The strategy to explain in all details will be lengthy so I plan to do a whole write up about it. But the short version is I use Price Action, Bollinger Band, and RSI (RSI only comes into it every now and then, mainly PA and BB). It’s very simple and actually, even though it’s the daily chart, I still am a day trader sometimes as I only hold certain trades for 24 hours. If the signal is strong, I’d stay in for longer (3-5 days and some times longer depending on the trade and how the market is acting).

Being able to trade the daily chart is extremely rewarding. Like I said, you only need to check the charts once, do your thing then move on with your life and not having to spend hours on charts. It will also teach you patience, which is one of the most important traits in trading that unfortunately is not very common all around.