Tag Archives: charts
Day Trading Verses Trading Daily And Weekly Charts
Day trading verses trading daily and weekly charts.
Some traders have different ideas on what day trading Forex is. I qualify day trading as trading anything less than a daily chart.
If you are trading 4 hour charts, 1 hour charts, 15 min charts or less, then you are day trading.
I am a day trader most of the time, but i can, and do trade longer time frames. The set ups that i use are better suited to day trading, but do work very well on the longer time frames.
The main benefit of trading longer time frames, daily and weekly charts is time. You can spend an hour or so every day analyzing the charts and set up your trades in advance. This style of trading is very good if you are in full time employment, or have other business commitments, or you just want more time to enjoy your life.
Day trading requires you to be at the PC for most of the day, looking for trading opportunities and set ups. Day trading is more exiting, but can also be more stressful. How you decide to trade is entirely up to you and each style can be equally rewarding.
This may come as a shock to some people, but the charts work the same way in every time frame from the 1 min chart right up to the monthly chart. Some trading strategies only work on certain time frames, but a good trading strategy should work equally well on any time frame. The smaller time frames are more volatile and set ups can be less reliable. You are also more likely to be stopped out of a trade if some price sensitive news comes out, but your stops are tighter on the smaller time frames, so you are protected to a certain extent.
I personally don’t trade anything less than the 15 min chart. I occasionally use the 5 min chart to manage a trade, or to get a better entry on a trade, but as far as set ups go its more likely that i will be trading 15 min, up to 4 hour time frames.
I like to trade everyday and if you are trading the longer time frames you sometimes have to wait for a few days sometimes a week or so before you get a good set up. I enjoy trading very much, and if i had to wait for a week for a trade it would drive me crazy, but each to their own. 🙂
If you are new to trading you have to decide what type of trader you want to be. Do you have the time required to sit in front of the PC and day trade, or do you prefer to take a couple of trades per week and have more free time? You can do both of course.
I teach people to trade any time frame so it makes no difference to me what type of trader you want to be, i can teach you either or.
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Forex For Beginners. Opening A Forex Trading Account.
OK so you know what Forex is, 
you have done a little research online, and you want to get involved. What do you need to know initially to get you up and running?
The first thing you need to do is open a trading account with a Forex broker. To open an account you will need some id. A passport, or a driving licence and a utility bill will satisfy most Forex brokers. If you wish to open a demo account to start with, you will not need your id’s but if you want to go live you will.
What Forex brokers do i recommend? I am in the UK and i have accounts with FX Pro, IG Index, and IC MarketsI use IC Markets for most of my day to day trading as they offer very good spreads and quick execution of trades, with low commission. IG and FX Pro also have good spreads. If you open a C Trader ECN account with IC Markets the spreads on that account are zero on some pairs, and they do go negative sometimes.
Before you decide which broker you want to go with you first need to consider what platform they use to trade from. The platform is basically a desktop or online interface to enable you to gain access to the Forex market. Some brokers have their own custom platform, or some use meta trader. Meta trader is an industry standard recognized trading platform that is used by lots of brokers. Its very flexible and you can add custom tools and indicators to it if you need to. I don’t use meta trader to trade from, but i have access to it to aid me in my trading decisions. I also use meta trader for training purposes too.
If the broker you decide to use does not offer meta trader its not a major problem, as you can open a free account with another broker to gain access to the meta trader charts.
OK so you have opened your account, what do you need to do next. Next you need to familiarize yourself with the trading platform, open up a chart and practice setting up a trade. Best to do this on demo first. Open a trade, close a trade. Put some lines on your chart, some trend lines, some moving averages some support and resistance lines etc. Don’t put too much on your charts as you will get too distracted from what the price is actually doing. Some traders have so many indicators on their charts they cannot see the price. Less is more in my book. Price is the most important thing, and that needs to be clearly visible on your charts.
When you have opened your account, and you are up to speed with your trading platform you are ready to enter a live market trade. My advice is to STOP right here. Don’t trade with real money until you have traded successfully on a demo account first. When you first start trading you will lose money, there is no doubt about it. So why lose real money? Its best to lose pretend money first until you know what you are doing.
I personally have never traded on demo, i could not take it seriously, as it was not real money. I started trading with real money, and guess what? I lost. 🙂 If you are like me and you find it hard to trade on demo, start very small on a micro trading account. You can trade a few pence per pip with those small accounts, so you will limit your losses. If you do not have a lot of money to start off with you will need to trade demo, and preserve your real money until you are a competent trader.
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