#355: What Does Your Trading Day Look Like

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Podcast:

What Does Your Trading Day Look Like

In this video:

00:25 – How to structure your trading day

01:06 – You’re not going to be a full-time trader immediately

01:46 – Fit your trading around your current situation

02:10 – My trading day

03:45 – Looking at different time frame charts

04:32 – Looking at the changeover of different time frame charts

05:16 – Live trades on live webinars. Trade hit profit

06:15 – Trading in 30 minutes a day

What does your trading day look like? Let’s talk about that and more right now.

Hey traders, Andrew Mitchem here at The Forex Trading Coach. Welcome to video and podcast number 355.

How to structure your trading day

I want to answer a question that I get asked quite a lot about, how somebody should structure their trading day and also what does my personal trading day look like? So let’s talk about that because it’s really important that as a trader you have a plan, you have a structure and that you have a routine. Why? Well, because you never really know what the market’s going to do and you need to be there… In my opinion, you need to be looking at the same type of charts and the same time of day as often as you can. And that just gives you consistency over time and you get to understand how the market works and its characteristics, et cetera. And now, obviously we’re trading, to do it properly you’ve got to enjoy it.

You’re not going to be a full-time trader immediately

Now for most people, realistically, you’re not going to be a full time trader, at least to start with. You’re going to have other commitments, family, jobs, sport, music, whatever it might be. And the problem is, is that right now there seems to be a bit of a movement around the so called sort of work hard lifestyle kind of gurus out there. And they’re sort of getting into this, you’ve got to keep going, going, going, going, going, go to work sort of 12, 14, 16 hour weeks, just got to keep going, and going, and going.

The problem is for those people that do that, first of all there’s no fun and secondly is, how on earth do you fit something new in like trading around that?

Fit your trading around your current situation

So for me it’s almost flip it the other way around. You’ve got to make the trading fit in around what you’re currently doing, especially if you’re not trading full time to start with. So for me personally, I think that less is more. I’ve always thought in terms of trading less is more. The less you interfere with the trade, the better you do. The less time you’re staring at your screen and your charts the better you do. And that has just been a proven case.

My trading day

So to give you an idea of how I structure my day, and bear in mind I’m in New Zealand, which is on a completely different time zone to most other countries around the world, is that you need to sort of base yourself on the New York time as well. So wherever you live in the world make that kind of adjustment. So for me, I wake up about six o’clock in the morning, kids are off to school by about quarter past seven and from then on I have a quick look at the charts about what’s happened over night my time into the later European session, and the US session. Getting an idea of what’s happened to my open positions, have they made profit or loss, just have a quick scan through the market. And then at around 10:30 my time, which is just before the 11 o’clock change over of the daily charts, I’ll then have a more serious look at what’s happening in the market.

So that is based on the 5:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, New York close of day. So around 4:30 PM Eastern Standard, which for me is the next day at 10:30 AM, I’ll go and look at the charts and I’ll go through because of course I do extra write-ups for my membership site and for the free sites and different places on strength and weakness analysis, so it takes me a little bit longer than normally if I wasn’t writing that. But anyway, I’ll go through, look at the daily charts and we’ll look at what is setting up on the daily chart, specific trades plus strength and weakness for the next 24 hour time period.

Looking at different time frame charts

At the same time though, I can look at 12 hour charts, eight hour charts, six hour charts and four hour charts and it’s really interesting how things change around. We held a webinar just last night in the European session for clients, and there were a huge number of eight hour chart trades that have occurred this week and a little bit into last week. Yet the previous week they were all four hour charts, I think the word that was lots of those but very few sort of eight and 12 hour charts. So it just depends on what’s happening in the market, which is why we really strongly suggest if you can, when you’re looking at the daily charts, look at another couple of timeframes at the same time. They all close at the same time, so why would you not look at them? So we do that.

Looking at the changeover of different time frame charts

And then for me… So it’s 11:00 AM, and then at 3:00 PM if I can, I’ll look at the four hour chart change over from 11 till three, four hours, look then. At 5:00 PM if I can, I’ll look at the six hour changeover. At 7:00 PM I’ll then look at the eight hour changeover and then depending on the day at 11:00 PM I will then look at the one hour, the four hour, six hour, and the 12 hour changeover that’s coming into 5:00 AM Eastern Standard Time. So not all the time do I do that because 11:00 PM it’s starting to get a little bit late, certainly on a Monday I don’t do that and on a Friday I don’t do that, but Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, midweek when there’s more likely price action I try to do that.

Live trades on live webinars. Trade hit profit

I know just last night we held a live webinar as mentioned, and that 11:00 PM my time, 5:00 AM New York time, we took trades on the live webinar, we took a sell trade on the 12 hour chart, Pound/Australian Dollar and that hit it’s profit target in 22 minutes, absolutely unbelievable. It doesn’t do that very, very often at all, especially on a 12 hour chart. Have a look on your charts, the Pound/Aussie just completely crashed, dropped away. We also took profit on our breakout strategy which made another one and a half percent this week and that’s a five minute strategy once a week on a Monday. And we also took a sell trade on the daily charts yesterday on the Pound/US which is going quite nicely, not quite got to its profit target but still going well. And I also took a five trade New Zealand/Yen on the six hour charts, that’s now got filled and we’ll know over the next day whether it hits its profit stop or we close it before the weekend.

Trading in 30 minutes a day

So all in all, you could quite easily trade in half an hour or so per day. And although that sounds really good, you got to remember though, the reality is you’ve got to do that work up front and that hard yards up front to get to that stage to have the ability and the eye to be able to know what you’re looking forward to get to that stage. But once you’ve got there half an hour, once a day, absolutely quite easily go through multiple timeframe charts two or three times a day and trade very, very well.

So I hope that helps. That’s a bit of an insight into my daily structure, but don’t forget that I’m doing that consistently. I’m not just one day just doing it and the next day, can’t be bothered. You have to do it consistently. Consistency is key and it will make you a good trader.

So I’ll see you this time next week. Once again, this is Andrew Mitchem at the Forex Trading Coach. Bye for now.