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Anyone managing sleep/work while trading the London Session from the US?
Logistically speaking, it will hardly work. You have to give up either the wife or the idea of trading at 2 am. You simply have no extra time left for a nap during the day, and you have to go to bed like 8-9 pm the latest. So taking a nap at 6 pm would be counterproductive.
Now sometimes I am up during the night for 1-2 hours and then I go back to sleep, so if you can sleep between let's say
5-7 am, that would give you a few extra hours. So that might work:
9pm to 2 am 5 hours
5 am to 7 am 2 hours
Then you get to trade 3 hours of the European times....
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
If you do not have the time available to trade intra-day/intra-session, then you need to either swing trade outrights or spreads. That's just the way it is.
Hey! thought this was an interesting post as I've been lurking the forums for a little bit and had to register to add my two cents.
I'm trying to get funded through topsteptrader, and I'm trading currency futures from Australia. That means I have to stay up at like 9pm-1am Australian EST to match with market CT market opening hours. I also work a day job from 7am-4pm Australian EST. This leaves me with roughly two 4 hour blocks of sleep instead of 8 solid hours.
One thing I find that is difficult is managing the stress from not getting enough sleep. People talk about hard work and giving up sleep to reach their goals but there's a certain amount of quality you have to produce in you're trading to get results.
For me personally.
- After a few profitable nights of trading, I can get easily agitated from work or trading stress and throw.
- Without sleep I'm not as disciplined in my trading due to difficulty focusing, this can reinforce bad habits in the long term.
- I won't be reviewing my trading decisions because I'll be too busy trying to sleep for work in 4 hours.
- You're immune system gets weak when you don't get enough sleep blah blah and all that junk that bad stuff that happens when you don't sleep enough.
- I crashed my car against the kerb of a carpark as I thought I was okay to function on less sleep (clearly not)
- The list goes on,
I'm trying to manage myself more efficiently for example.
- Talking less bull shit to my co-coworkers during work hours so I don't feel as exhausted after work.
- Getting good but not relentless exercise so I feel more energized throughout the day.
- Stressing less about life things I can't control like scalping wasn't stressful enough.
I'm still experimenting, I may even change to spot forex to lessen the stress involved with trading nights. Because European and London sessions coincide with the hours after I finish work. If topsteptrader launches its forex program I'd be interested.
Trading can disturb a married life if the spouse does not care about markets or trading. More time with PC more irritated a spouse can get. There needs to be a balance , specially if you work full time , want to trade after work or late nights .
I've experimented with different sleep cycles,
The problem with lets say Uberman is if you don't sleep exactly on point your body crashes within 10 minutes and then you will just feel rotten.
I was operating on everyman for a while, and I've recently gone back to monophasic and quite frankly I feel the best I have ever felt in a long time. I don't stress out, I'm focused, my memory works better, my decision making is sharper etc and I'd like to trade under this state. But I'm gonna have to change that soon as I start trading combines again so my plan of attack is to be able to trade under stress and have a strong psychology to be able to do so.
I've also read the science behind resting and made my own opinion.
Some people have an genetic unfair advantage they can get by on a block of 6 hours monophasic (this makes me jealous).
My understanding is most people need 7-9, and the most efficient sleeping pattern is monophasic and biphasic.
Think about google afternoon naps, they are following biphasic.
There are blogs of people trying out different sleeping pattern, definitely check it out I can't give you a link but I know they are around.
I'm Vietnamese and most Asians I know tend to need more sleep more often than white people I don't know the science behind this and or how it works. Me and some of my asian friends can sleep anywhere, anytime. I can even sleep standing very easily. Just some food for thought. haha
I can relate- I trade US markets, and live in New Zealand( where the US market currently opens at 1:30am).
Over the last few years I've also lived Australia, and South East Asia- Which has forced me to play around with many different sleep cycles. Let me tell you that getting up at 2-3am to trade markets everyday takes alot of discipline, and sacrifice, which most people aren't willing to commit to.
I've recently toggled with different sleep cycles and was sleeping from 7pm-1am with a nap during the day- this left me feeling pretty miserable unless I was loaded up of caffeine/ stimulants. What i found was that going to sleep around midday, then waking up around 6pm, with a nap from around 9-11 leaves me feeling near my best around the time the market opens( This is crucial for me). There's no room for a 9-5 job with this kind of sleep cycle, and it makes socializing difficult aswell- especially since I used to be the guy that never turned down a night out. However that's what it takes for me to live in a foreign country and successfully trade US markets- so i'm not complaining. If you're youngish and ambitious, then you have to make sacrifices somewhere.
Things I've found useful:
-Modafinil( Don't currently use, however it's great for performing at 100% off only a few hours sleep)
-Small doses of melatonin( less than 100mg), this is almost essential if you're going to be sleeping during the day/ early evenings
-Using a black out sleep mask
-Flux( anyone using a computer/ cell phone before they sleep should be using flux- google it)
-Exercise/ mediation ( If i don't work out everyday, I'll struggle to focus the following day)
-No Alcohol, and minimal caffeine( I love coffee & green tea, but they both mess with your sleep cycle- especially coffee)
-Having a consistent sleep cycle( even on weekends/ days off)
If you're planning on getting up at 2-3am in the morning an expect to be fully functional and consistently profitable, then you must ask yourself some serious questions about how committed you really are to succeeding as a trader- your path is going to be alot more emotionally challenging than someone trading on "normal hours". You'll also need to get serious about your sleep cycle and toggle around to find what works for you. You'll find lots of advice on the internet, just like you will with trading, however at the end of the day it's about what works for you. If you generally have a passion for trading markets, then everything becomes alot easier...
Did it for years and started to get dark under my eyes so I stopped. Now I just set it and forget or don't even bother trading it at all. My skin under my eyes went back to normal.
I've struggled with the London open equals 3 am EST dilemma for years. Then a friend told me about Bifurcated sleep and how it was once the norm and that some scientists feel it's actually more healthy.
Now a potential fly in the ointment is that it only works if the middle-of-the-night awake session is two hours or less. However, my extensive data base that includes hundreds of both actual and hypothetical trades, tells me that, at least for my favorite trending setup (which produces the vast bulk of my profits) the time between 3 am and 4:15 am is the most effective and efficient (in terms of average pips per hour) time to trade Euro currencies. After 4:15, profits can still be made but at a much lower pips per hour rate and ONLY if there is some significant news event in the early morning.
So, I split my trading day into two sessions (sometimes three). The first is 3 am to around 4:15. Then I go back to bed and sleep until about 7:30. Pips per hour from 3 to 4:15 tends to be about 5 times that of the 4:15 to 8:00 timeframe with news. Without news, 4:15 to 8:00 tends to lose money.
Next in terms of pips per hour is 8 am to 9:15 (right after the New York open, followed by 9:15 to 10. Between 10 and noon can be okay, but again ONLY if there is a significant news event at 8:30 or 10 (or of course a surprise announcement). For my trending setup at least, after 10 am (The Londoners have gone home) on a no-news day tends to actually lose money, as does 4:15 to 8.
I almost never trade the afternoons (I trade for a living full time) as the pips per hour tend to be abysmal (except for Fed days).
Another productive time is right after the Asia open (notice a theme here?). I'll occasionally put on an Asian trade but I usually make all I need between 3 to 4:15, 8 to 10, and, only if there is big news, 10 to 12.
I used to get up at 5am to trade for a couple of hours before the US open, rest during London lunch time (which is a terrible time to trade), then trade from 8 to 12 with an occasional break. Around 5 1/2 hours total.
Now I get up at 2:45, am usually back to bed by 4:30 and get up at 7:30. If I have a trade still on at 4:30, I just put a trailing stop on it and go back to bed. So, now my average trading day is about 4 1/4 hours and makes more $ than the 5 1/2 hour schedule.
There may be something to this bifurcated sleep theory as I've noticed I don't go through the mid-afternoon slump I had experienced when I was getting up at 4:45 and not going back to sleep.
Note that I only know that this analysis by time period works for certain trending setups. For support / resistance based setups such as reversals and volume profile analysis, it could be just the opposite for all I know. But I gave up on S/R based setups long ago, although I did take another stab at volume profile a few months ago. Just as the time frames I mentioned earlier are much more efficient in terms of pips per hour, my trending stuff is FAR more efficient than any of the S/R based stuff I've found. Also note that I don't ignore S/R, it's just that it plays a supporting role in my essentially trend based setups.
All generalizations are false, including this one.
