In my journey as a forex trader, I have met many new and intending traders who hold day jobs. Most of these people pick an interest in trading because they become exposed to the opportunity available in the global foreign exchange market, the largest financial market in the world.
Most of you reading my lesson today probably are low on time and work regular jobs during the day or run some business(es). Your job, career, or business probably consumes most of your free time each week, leaving you with a little window to look at the markets each morning and night. Sadly, the markets are not open on the weekends, so that won’t help you either.
In today’s lesson, I am putting forward a solution to help you make the most out of the time you have available for analyzing and trading the market daily while keeping your day job.
Contrary to what many traders think, you do not need to sit in front of your charts for several hours trying to catch every little move. The trading method I prefer only takes 30 minutes to 1 hour of your time a day, MAX.
The good news is; that holding a day job can improve your trading result!
The daily and 4 hours charts are my favorite chart time frames.
I focus more on the end-of-day prices through the daily time frame because the end of a Forex trading day in the New York session provides us with a great piece of information; Who won the battle that day between the Bulls and Bears?
And because at the time, there is either a price action signal or not. And once you get up to speed on price action trading, all you have to do is analyze the charts by quickly scanning through the daily charts of your favorite markets, looking for great setups. That doesn’t require more than 30 minutes once you know what you’re doing.
Many traders have asked me about ‘missing trade setups’ on the 15-minute charts or other small time frames if they focus on the daily and 4-hour charts like I teach. My answer is: YES, you may miss some setups on those low time frames, and that is a GOOD thing.
Understand that the lower you go in the time frames, the more noise and meaningless price movement there is.
So, are you really missing out on anything important if you ignore these low time frames? No, you’re not. What you’re missing out on is stress, over-trading, and losing money. And these are all things everyone agrees are good to miss out on. The feelings traders get of missing out on trade setups are born out of greed, fear, and a need to be in the market all the time.
Thus, focusing on higher time frames in your trades is not just a much better fit for your daily schedule and time constraints, but it’s also a BETTER WAY TO TRADE. Begin to see your day job as a good thing, not an inconvenience or impediment to your trading activities, as many traders erroneously believe.
For me, I do not trade every day of the week. I usually open new trades during three days of the trading week and only if I find my trade setups. Thus, giving me time for other activities.
In fact, to better distract me from sitting in front of my computer all day analyzing the charts, I have taken up forex coaching and other small businesses.
Your job is a natural distraction from over-trading and over-analyzing the market because while providing you with a steady flow of income, it can also help you remain disciplined and patient in trading.
What I mean is this: the more you sit in front of your charts looking for trades and conjuring up reasons to get into the market, the more you are likely to enter a low-probability trade signal.
Getting into a low-probability trade often triggers a wire in your brain that opens a floodgate of emotional trading errors. And such errors feed on themselves, getting worse and worse until you decide to stop them by conscious intervention of logic and clear thinking, which can be extremely difficult for many people to do if they ever do it.
Here is where my day/swing trades strategies can help you trade better. When you are only looking at the markets two times per day for 20 to 30 minutes a pop, it eliminates most of the temptation to over-trade or to develop the wrong trading mindset. So you are not just getting a more relevant view of the market because you’re focusing on the higher time frames, but also helping yourself create a mental environment of clarity and simplicity, which is an essential ingredient to successful long-term trading.