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How Many Hours a Day do You Trade?


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How Many Hours a Day do You Trade?

  #21 (permalink)
 
DarkPoolTrading's Avatar
 DarkPoolTrading   is a Vendor
 
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researcher247 View Post
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Not sure how old you are, though you might want to halve the mountain biking or 'something' like that and do 'some' Yoga/meditation/hiking instead~~oh, breathe more.

This will begin to calm your mind over time. It does work--give it enough time and don't 'tabulate' the results. Just process it w/o keeping score.

Good luck!

peace/hedvig

Funnily enough I actually do currently do Ashtanga yoga twice a week. However this is outside of trading hours (Saturday morning and Monday night). Lol,...guess what my mind jumps to when it's time for Savasana at the end,...trading! But I agree with you, yoga is an excellent addition to balance out trading. However I am yet to be able to calm my mind. It's a work in progress

thanks for the suggestions.

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  #22 (permalink)
 
tderrick's Avatar
 tderrick 
Nashville, Tennessee
 
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GaryD View Post

What starts as something fun and exciting becomes something obsessive and debilitating. And then, maybe, you work your way back to fun and exciting.



How incredibly accurate.

I am just exiting stage 2....


AJ
Nashville, Tennessee


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  #23 (permalink)
 
GaryD's Avatar
 GaryD 
Orlando, Florida
 
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DarkPoolTrading View Post
Funnily enough I actually do currently do Ashtanga yoga twice a week. However this is outside of trading hours (Saturday morning and Monday night). Lol,...guess what my mind jumps to when it's time for Savasana at the end,...trading! But I agree with you, yoga is an excellent addition to balance out trading. However I am yet to be able to calm my mind. It's a work in progress

thanks for the suggestions.

My wife studied yoga and became an instructor, I studied trading and became a full time trader (we are both now officially 25 again). There were many analogies about how the two were similar. Balance, calm mind, strength to hold a pose/trade, precision in the positioning...

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  #24 (permalink)
 
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 GaryD 
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researcher247 View Post
Indeed,

CL is quite good 8:30am est up to 'round about 11am 'ish' est--sometimes inventory day up to 11:25am 'ish.' Take that wonderful 2.5 hour lunch and do what you like.

I prefer Tues-Wed-Thur. for 1:25pm est up to 2:28pm est for CL p.m. session trading (if I trade CL @that time). No Friday p.m. session in CL (seems like gambling). Monday p.m. session 'can' be okay--depends on volume and what is happening in equities/forex/interest rates/volatility on the day.

Now you got it, right?

peace/hedvig

Ditto, except for Friday pm if there is obvious and immediate geopolitical pressure.

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  #25 (permalink)
 
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 tderrick 
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DarkPoolTrading View Post
This is something im trying to find a balance with. Currently I do some form of market related activity (trading, webinars, excel stats, reading etc) for 12 hours a day. I trade the full London session plus the morning of the US session. So although I dont sit staring at my charts for 12 hours, im pretty much at my computer doing some form of market related activity. I try to take short breaks every hour or two.

A while back I added a time of day study to my stats spreadsheet. This was about 2 months ago and the stats since then have continued in roughly the same trend:

It came as no surprise that the majority of my profits are coming from the US morning session. The problem is that when the US session starts ive already been at my computer for 8 hours. So im mentally exhausted even though I dont admit it to myself and just 'power through'.

I have finally come to the realization that I need to force myself to take one large significant break mid day (in addition to smaller breaks). So starting next week I am going to trade the first 2 hours of the London session which is another good profit time for me. Then take a 2 hour break doing something physical (mountain biking or something like that). I will then come back and trade till about 30mins or so before the US session at which point ill take a 30min break until the session starts. The idea being that I will be fresher for when it really matters, ie: London morning and US morning.

This is going to be a bit of a challenge for me. Because my mind is constantly thinking about trading and even if im not actively trading then I watch webinars, read trading books etc. Im constantly on a search for more knowledge, more screentime, more, more, more. But I feel that coming into the US session fresh is important and lately i've been exhausted by that point in the day.

-------------------------------

This is exactly where I am and why I started this thread.

I have been trying to come up with a schedule since I have gone full time trading.

I love the London NQ, as the volume, pace and risk management are
perfect for my strategy and I have been able to earn a living with the profits gained there.


I have been at the point for some time that I will make my profits by the US open and then just watch the
larger volume of RTH work. It is very difficult to make it past lunch, as that is closing in on 12 hours up and 10 hours
in front of the charts. It's just impossible to focus for that long.

So now, I think I have a trading plan for the US open and my original strategies work fine for after the London close
as Volume takes about 1/3 off the madness...

I think it is simply time to start shifting the schedule so that I have more brain power for the US open.
Currently, I have close to a normal work day under my belt by then - crazy.

With my method, the risk is not that much more, but the profit potential is exponential . The London hours
are typically "capped" by the prior day range - it rarely moves out of it or across all of it.
The RTH movement is unlimited - even if the market is range bound, it can travel back and forth across
the whole range before settling in somewhere around Y close. That's big ticks. - I said TICKS


There are some days, however, the ON move is a long and classically structured trend, built for
scaling in - Only to see the RTH become a huge mash of choppy goo. So I think always catching the back
1/2 or 1/3 of the ETH is good, just to lock in some calm, easy profits. Then, just see if you can lock into
a huge RTH move or two... It would be worth the RR in the long run, I would think.

We shall see


______________________________________

So I think I will try a 430 to Lunch type of bag for a while.
If I need to, I can always come back for the last couple of hours on into the ETH which can be quite exciting
at times.

It's just time to scale it back and focus on the good earnings areas.


Thank you guys, so much, for the input.

nexusfi.com (formerly BMT) - the best trading community on the planet


AJ
Nashville, Tennessee


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  #26 (permalink)
 
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 aquarian1 
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13.5 M-F and 8 Sat and Sun

all the time I am not sleeping, doing chores, buying groceries meals, washroom, shower, shave etc.
An exception to this is on mornings I am on schedule and up with my alarm 2:45am.
Then I go for a run at the track 3-4am.

Most hours are mostly number gathering, analysis, updating my spreadsheets, hand charts etc.
Actually placing the trade is not of course much time. If I have done this correctly (faint hope that) the stop and closing order are OCO placed at the time of trade entry.

In theory I wouldn't need to do anything else until the alarm goes off (at the target zone), but with a small account I am usually tense and tend to watch the trade like a hawk until I am 5pts in-the-money, at which time I can adjust the stop to BE.

I hope/plan to change this when I have enough money to hire people to do the spreadsheet updating and to pursue new research ideas that come from time to time.

..........
peace, love and joy to you
.........
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  #27 (permalink)
 janfilimon 
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Normally traded CL between 9:00AM to 11:30AM. Before trading I have no special preparations because my motto is: trade what you see, not what you think it will be happen.
When trading options, the situation is completely different. Traded in the first half hour after the market start, and half an hour before closing markets, it is most likely that I fill my open positions. In the meantime, of course, watching with one eye what's happening in the stock market. Years ago, I watched the market ten, twelve hours a day. Now I'm doing all the things a lot faster and more efficient. So, I left a lot of time for other things.
Happy trading for all.

Jan

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  #28 (permalink)
 
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 Massive l 
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2 hours or less. Some days there's nothing to do but check in on trades that are already going.

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  #29 (permalink)
toucan94506
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I trade from the futures market open for about 3-4 hours....


toucan

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  #30 (permalink)
 
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 Daytrader999 
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Due to my regular day job, I can only trade the US afternoon sessions for about 2 hours...

"If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much." - Jim Rohn
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