ok, I work days (United States Eastern Time) so my trading hours would be 5pm eastern until… so 9pm GMT so what would be the best pair for a beginner to trade during those hours and why? Recommendations you experts?
thanks !
You might have some luck with JPY crosses, especially AUDJPY or NZDJPY, just because those countries have markets open in the evening (for your timezone). Next in line might be AUDUSD, NZDUSD, and USDJPY.
But if you want my personal opinion, the asian session (which covers the times you are available) makes crappy trading. Most of the daily volatility happens after Europe and London open (2am/3am respectively) and then again when USA opens (8am).
Then again you could always trade daily charts, then your targets and stops go beyond intra-day volatility and you would be entering your orders at the beginning of the daily candles if you were to do your analysis 5pm’ish
Thanks for the advice !
Yes! 
GBP/JPY the best!
the best pair can be:
Eur/Usd - Almost all the brokers offer a low spread for this pair
Eur/Jpy (Gbp/Jpy) - this pairs have a big daily move
Yes. 200 - 300 pips normal move :eek:
Of course the pairs whose contracts have a base currency in GBP or EUR will have more volatility, because you are trading 10,000 GBP or EUR for a minilot, which is worth more than 10,000 USD or AUD.
I think if everyone really did the calculations, and compensated for that fact they’d realize that you could get the same $-valued moves just by purchasing 2 contracts of a USD,NZD, AUD based pair.
Also GBP/JPY used to be good for trading because the interest rate difference between GBP and JPY was very large, meaning when risk aversion was in play, GBP/JPY got sold like hotcakes making huge moves. Interest rates for GBP now are 0.5% and 0.1% for JPY, hardly any difference at all. I bet if you compensate for the larger GBP contract value, you’d find that AUDJPY or NZDJPY are giving you more $-based volatility these days because AUD and NZD have the highest rates of the major currencies.
Actually I’ll lay down the numbers right here for all you fine GBP/JPY loving ladies and gentlemen!
[B]Current GBP/AUD rate: 2.0240
Current GBP/JPY 20day Avg. True Range: 297 pips
Current AUD/JPY 20day Avg. True Range: 182 pips[/B]
Now let’s find out what AUD-based contract size would be equivalent to a 10,000 GBP-based contract:
[B]Take 10,000 GBP x 2.0240 = 20,240 AUD[/B]
So now we see that whenever we’re trading 1 minilot of GBP/JPY, it is equivalent to trading about 2 minilots of AUD/JPY.
So [B]person A[/B] trades [B]1 minilot of GBP/JPY [/B]and gets [B]297 pips [/B]of volatility per day on average.
[B]Person B[/B] trades an equivalent [B]2 minilots of AUD/JPY [/B]and gets [B]182 x 2 = 364 pips[/B] of volatility per day on average.
Now I can’t tell you what to do but if you’re looking for volatility, 364 is bigger than 297 any way you cut it!