In this episode of Truth About FX, Walter talks about choosing the right time frame to trade and the factors that you should consider. According to Walter, you should always consider your lifestyle when choosing a time frame and ask yourself “does it fit my daily schedule?”, “am I comfortable trading on this time frame?” or “is my current time frame giving me the results I want from the charts?”

Hugh also shares how and why he chose his current time frame and the importance of acknowledging your strengths and weaknesses.

Download (Duration: 06:17 / 7.19 MB)

In This Episode:

00:35 – wrong approach

01:12 – a set block

02:05 – the way it works

03:09 – what fits your lifestyle?

03:41 – really tempting

04:52 – a little crazy

05:57 – great habits to build on

Tweetables:

What do you want to get out of trading?[Click To Tweet].

Your trading should fit in with your lifestyle.  [Click To Tweet].

Trade with the timeframe you’re most comfortable with.  [Click To Tweet].

Announcer: Sometimes, forex trading is a wild and wooly place to be. That’s why Hugh is here, to post your questions to Walter, the naked forex guy. Hugh’s got questions and Walter’s got the answers. Here at the Truth About FX Podcast.

Hugh: Hi, Walter! I want to find the right time frame to trade. How do I decide on this?

Walter: This is really an interesting question, Hugh. I think a lot of traders, they approach it the wrong way. They think of it in terms of “Hey, Joe trader makes a lot of money. He trades the one-hour chart so I’ve got to trade the one-hour chart.”

It’s not really that. What you want to do is you want to fit it into your life. I’ll give you a couple of examples. I have a good friend and he lives in England and he, basically, sits down in the morning and does his trading in the morning.

He looks at the lower time frames. He has a business but almost runs itself so he doesn’t have to do a whole lot in terms of his business and, instead, what he does is he concentrates on his trading in the morning.

He has that set block of four, five hours a week. He’ll sit down and watch the one-hour chart and try to lock into some trades.

Now, there are other traders who, like for example: I know another student, she’s in France and she will actually trade the four-hour candles.

The reason she does that, she can check the candle that prints before she takes her child to school. When she comes back, she has few hours and then she can check the next candle.

If you have that kind of life where you can check your charts two or three times a day, and you’re okay with trading the four-hour candles, and you’ve back tested it and it worked for you, that’ll be another opportunity.

Or, if you’re like me, you really just want to do this once a day where you sit down and you look at what’s going on. To be fair, I do it twice a day. Here in Australia, the way it works is my daily candles will close in the morning.

In the morning, I’ll see the daily candle close and it changes a little bit depending on  what time of the year it is. Basically, in the morning,