Knowing When to Trade

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#421: Knowing When to Trade

In this video:

00:27 – When should I trade?

00:51 – How I used to trade many years ago

01:27 – Do what works for you

02:35 – Some examples of when I trade

04:00 – This makes trading enjoyable

04:13 – Where to put your funds and why I use Blueberry Markets

05:22 – How and where to trade

05:44 – Share and like this video and podcast

How do you know when to look at your charts and when you should and should not be trading? Let's talk about that and more right now.

Hey traders, it's Andrew Mitchem at The Forex Trading Coach with video and podcast number 421.

When should I trade?

I want to talk about a very important topic. I get asked this very often, and it's all about when should I trade. Now of course, the answer for you will be different to someone else; it depends where you live in the world, what your available time is, what type of trader you are. There's lots and lots of variables. But I want to give you some examples and hopefully help you to decide when the best time is for you. I'll share with you when I trade myself.

How I used to trade many years ago

So years ago, I used to be looking at the charts all the time, looking at every pip movement up and down on five minute charts, one minute charts. All that crazy kind of stuff. And then I got into news trading and I thought that's going to be the way to trade. But living in New Zealand, most of the news announcements were in my night time or early hours of the morning. So I was getting up at like 2:00, 3:00, 4:00 in the morning and looking for straddle trades, trading US news announcements. Of course it didn't work. But it had some merit and some logic, well I thought it had merit and logic at the time.

Do what works for you

So it comes back to you have to develop something that works for you and it has to be realistic. And that's why some 17 years later I'm still trading, because although I went through that experimental stage early on, I then very soon discovered that if I'm going to trade properly and I'm going to do this properly and I'm going to do this professionally, I need to do something that works. So for that reason, I then started to understand candle patterns and strength and weakness analysis. And when you understand candles, what you realise is there is no point in looking at a candle when it's mid-formation. So what I mean by that is I only look at a candle and make a decision on whether I'm taking a new trade or not once that candle has closed and completed. Because then nothing else moves. Then you can make your analysis. A lot of benefits to that. Less stress, you know when to look at your charts, and if you trade the way that I trade using retracement limit orders you don't even need to be there at that exact time when the candle changes.

Some examples of when I trade

So to give you some examples: the daily candle will close and the new day opens at 5:00 PM New York time. That's Eastern Standard time. At that time, I personally look at the daily charts because that's when I write my analysis. And I also at that stage look at the four hour charts, the six hour, the eight hour, and the 12 hour charts. So I can look through those five different timeframe charts, it takes me 10-15 minutes to do all of that once a day. And of course at the beginning of each week you can look at the weekly charts, scan through those in five-10 minutes. The beginning of each month, you can do exactly the same on the monthly charts. So you only need to do the monthly charts once in a month. Very, very easy. The weekly charts once a week. Very easy.

And then it depends on your available time. So for me personally, I might look at the close of a six hour chart during the day just once, and then the eight hour chart just once if I'm available.