Trading 24 hours per day, 5 days per week

JTrader

JTrader

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Hi

i'm about to start trading my strategy on forex, 24 hours per day, 5 days per week on 4 hour charts.

This will involve spending only 10-15 minutes at the computer every 4 hours - at the open/close of a new H4 candle.

I'm slightly concerned about how i will cope with being surrounded by the markets 24/5 - 24/7 like this, as i am a heavy sleeper, and will need to attend my charts at say 3am and 7am on weekday mornings.

Does anyone else trade in this, or a similar way?

If so, how do you cope with attending your PC every 4 (or similar no. of hours) hours 5 days per week?

Do you find it easy or hard?

How long did it take for you to get used to this?

Did it become easier once you got into the rythm of your schedule?

All tips, feedback & advice welcome!

Cheers.
 
JTrader said:
Hi

i'm about to start trading my strategy on forex, 24 hours per day, 5 days per week on 4 hour charts.

This will involve spending only 10-15 minutes at the computer every 4 hours - at the open/close of a new H4 candle.

I'm slightly concerned about how i will cope with being surrounded by the markets 24/5 - 24/7 like this, as i am a heavy sleeper, and will need to attend my charts at say 3am and 7am on weekday mornings.

Does anyone else trade in this, or a similar way?

If so, how do you cope with attending your PC every 4 (or similar no. of hours) hours 5 days per week?

Do you find it easy or hard?

How long did it take for you to get used to this?

Did it become easier once you got into the rythm of your schedule?

All tips, feedback & advice welcome!

Cheers.
Click to expand...


It sounds like you will be managing your trades every 4 hrs....personally I would place a cato stop for the 3 A M slot....the sleep will do you more good I feel ...lol

cv
 
JTrader said:
Hi

i'm about to start trading my strategy on forex, 24 hours per day, 5 days per week on 4 hour charts.

This will involve spending only 10-15 minutes at the computer every 4 hours - at the open/close of a new H4 candle.

I'm slightly concerned about how i will cope with being surrounded by the markets 24/5 - 24/7 like this, as i am a heavy sleeper, and will need to attend my charts at say 3am and 7am on weekday mornings.

Does anyone else trade in this, or a similar way?

If so, how do you cope with attending your PC every 4 (or similar no. of hours) hours 5 days per week?

Do you find it easy or hard?

How long did it take for you to get used to this?

Did it become easier once you got into the rythm of your schedule?

All tips, feedback & advice welcome!

Cheers.
Click to expand...

No amount of money in the world would tempt me to lose any of my beauty sleep.

I presume you sleep alone?
 
rols said:
I presume you sleep alone?
Click to expand...

very good point.

last time i decided to leave a trade overnight, my wife mentioned something ....cant remember the exact phrase but it went along these lines

"____alarms ______next_________trade_______street_______"

so, had to become a scalper again. i have her to blame for not being able to swing overnight :LOL:
 
id echo counter violent by just using a wide stop for the 3am candle and this seems to be the only one youd have to miss if you went to bed at 11:15 up at 6:45. if you didnt have any yen positions open youd probably wake up to no more than a 20 pip move in most cases anyway
 
oh just realised i curve fitted the hours eurusd 5am but idea still applies with different hours depending on which pair 4 hr changes
 
jacinto said:
very good point.

last time i decided to leave a trade overnight, my wife mentioned something ....cant remember the exact phrase but it went along these lines

"____alarms ______next_________trade_______street_______"

so, had to become a scalper again. i have her to blame for not being able to swing overnight :LOL:
Click to expand...

It is only the 3am alarm call that concerns me slightly. Lets face it, a working day of 1.5 hours tops is not bad in anyones books!.
I think i also remember reading that 3am is the most dangerous part of the night for a person in their sleep cycle, but then surely this is relative to the persons sleep/life cycle/timetable. But if it is the most dangerous part of the night, perhaps being suddenly awoken is not the best idea :eek: :rolleyes: .

Best way to think of it perhaps is as a enforced toilet break by alarm call at 3am 7 then again at 7am :LOL: .

I probably need a couple of dry runs to see how i get on!
 
tightstops said:
id echo counter violent by just using a wide stop for the 3am candle and this seems to be the only one youd have to miss if you went to bed at 11:15 up at 6:45. if you didnt have any yen positions open youd probably wake up to no more than a 20 pip move in most cases anyway
Click to expand...

Well ignoring one of the 6 H4 candles in a day does kind of impede the strategy.
As mentioned, this will only take up around 1.5 hours of my day in total. Therefore i see the 3am candle as a fairly light COST to be endured in order to make my 1.5 hour working day possible.

Does anyone else trade in a similar way to my proposed way (H4ish) - 24/5?

Cheers.
 
Last edited:
JTrader,

Not sure which currency pair you are looking at, but are you sure there will be enough happening at the 3am candle to make it worth getting up? Is it something you could automate? If you have a stop in place at 11pm, couldn't you just ignore the 3am: in your back testing how often did it trigger a new position?

All I can say is that when I've put together 24-hr currency strategies I've regarded missed signals in the middle of the night as one of the costs of business (and a pretty low cost at that). You'll be wanting to do other things as well as this strategy (like develop and test new ones), and none of that is best done when tired.
 
Jack o'Clubs said:
Trendie,

Not sure which currency pair you are looking at, but are you sure there will be enough happening at the 3am candle to make it worth getting up? Is it something you could automate? If you have a stop in place at 11pm, couldn't you just ignore the 3am: in your back testing how often did it trigger a new position?

All I can say is that when I've put together 24-hr currency strategies I've regarded missed signals in the middle of the night as one of the costs of business (and a pretty low cost at that). You'll be wanting to do other things as well as this strategy (like develop and test new ones), and none of that is best done when tired.
Click to expand...

:eek: :eek: JTrader, surely!

I do look at 4-hrs, but have taken a different perspective.
I trade "sessions", ie. 7am-12am, 12-5pm. and if I'm interested, the 7-10pm.
I find it easier psychologically, in that I can look back on a session as a "closed page".

JTrader,I feel the emotional investment is not worth it.
if you wake up and you missed a signal, just take a reduced stake entry on a lower time-frame.
(EDIT: later in the day when you wake up. )
statistically, you will also get a signal that triggered at 3am, only to wake up to a better entry price due to a pullback.

its just a numbers game.
 
trendie said:
:eek: :eek: JTrader, surely!

I do look at 4-hrs, but have taken a different perspective.
I trade "sessions", ie. 7am-12am, 12-5pm. and if I'm interested, the 7-10pm.
I find it easier psychologically, in that I can look back on a session as a "closed page".

JTrader,I feel the emotional investment is not worth it.
if you wake up and you missed a signal, just take a reduced stake entry on a lower time-frame.
statistically, you will also get a signal that triggered at 3am, only to wake up to a better entry price due to a pullback.

its just a numbers game.
Click to expand...

Sorry, got my names mixed up (do it all the time with my kids - it's when I get confused with bid/offer I'll need to stop trading). But anyway, I think your approach is definitely more sustainable in the long run...
 
The responses so far have all been pretty much against a middle of the night chart check!

For me, I consider a working day of 1.5 hours total, to be fairly light, and if this requires 15 minutes attention at 3am in order to make this possible, then so be it - its a commitment i will have to make.
 
it might be worth running some tests with and without the 3am candle i mean it has to be the least significant of them all and would probably account for less than a 2% difference in return. would you take a 2% paycut to have a decent nights sleep or put another way if someone paid you 2% of your wages to get you up at 3am every night for half an hour would you accept?
 
tightstops said:
it might be worth running some tests with and without the 3am candle i mean it has to be the least significant of them all and would probably account for less than a 2% difference in return. would you take a 2% paycut to have a decent nights sleep or put another way if someone paid you 2% of your wages to get you up at 3am every night for half an hour would you accept?
Click to expand...

It really does depend on the currency pairs that are being traded.
The 24H forex day is split into an Asian sesssion which kicks off first in NZ, and moves west through a European session and then a US session. As the US session closes the following days Asian session has already started in NZ.
 
JTrader said:
The responses so far have all been pretty much against a middle of the night chart check!

For me, I consider a working day of 1.5 hours total, to be fairly light, and if this requires 15 minutes attention at 3am in order to make this possible, then so be it - its a commitment i will have to make.
Click to expand...

Hmm. But it's not 15 minutes at 3am is it? You'll need to be up in time to fully wake up, check your PC is up and running and to reboot if need be. You'll need to be sufficiently mentally alert to make the right trade decision, and then to place the trade. You'll then be returning to bed wide awake, your mind racing with the information you've just processed. I bet the whole thing will take at least an hour out of your sleep, just when you're at the most important stage of your sleep cycle for rest. In your back-testing, how often did the 3am candle give you a signal that was worth taking, or as Trendie said, couldn't have been entered, at say 6am at at least as good a price? By all means give your system a try out, but I'd be amazed if you stuck with it for more than a week or two.
 
JTrader said:
Hi

i'm about to start trading my strategy on forex, 24 hours per day, 5 days per week on 4 hour charts.

This will involve spending only 10-15 minutes at the computer every 4 hours - at the open/close of a new H4 candle.

I'm slightly concerned about how i will cope with being surrounded by the markets 24/5 - 24/7 like this, as i am a heavy sleeper, and will need to attend my charts at say 3am and 7am on weekday mornings.

Does anyone else trade in this, or a similar way?

If so, how do you cope with attending your PC every 4 (or similar no. of hours) hours 5 days per week?

Do you find it easy or hard?

How long did it take for you to get used to this?

Did it become easier once you got into the rythm of your schedule?

All tips, feedback & advice welcome!

Cheers.
Click to expand...

As an experiment about a year or so ago, I traded using a similar method - visitng the charts every 4 hours - I was using a demo account at CS so I was forced to stop trading 9pm - 7am - which I found didn't affect me that much. Occassionally I got hit by a sharp spike in overnight price movements.

In the end I found the trading didn't suit me, as it was demo I was trading the trend aggressively & I made 2 months of profits totalling 180%, all to be wiped out in 2 weeks by choppy, ranging markets. For me it was all too much effort and I was unable to resolve a way to cut out the losses of those 2 weeks without severely impacting the profits of the other 9 weeks.

Personally I think you'll begin to resent that 3am alarm call in a matter of a few weeks.
 
Jack o'Clubs said:
Hmm. But it's not 15 minutes at 3am is it? You'll need to be up in time to fully wake up, check your PC is up and running and to reboot if need be. You'll need to be sufficiently mentally alert to make the right trade decision, and then to place the trade. You'll then be returning to bed wide awake, your mind racing with the information you've just processed. I bet the whole thing will take at least an hour out of your sleep, just when you're at the most important stage of your sleep cycle for rest. In your back-testing, how often did the 3am candle give you a signal that was worth taking, or as Trendie said, couldn't have been entered, at say 6am at at least as good a price? By all means give your system a try out, but I'd be amazed if you stuck with it for more than a week or two.
Click to expand...

But with a working day of 1.5 hours total, you can sleep as long as u want - say from 1105-0250, 0305-0650, & 0705- 1050 etc. - therefore there's more than enough hours in a day to make up for any sleep deprivation encountered by the 3am candle, and getting used to waking up at the enforced 0250 period (i.e. an extended toilet break) is something that can surely be gotten used to once you get into a rythm.





Thanks for the replies.

what i really wanted from this thread was for some people who do trade in a similar way 24/5 to give a few tips/feedback/advice about their experiences of doing so, and integrating this style of trading commitment into their lifestyle successfully, with minimum interference.
From the replies i have had so far, it seems that the concept of 24/5 trading off longer TF's is foreign to most here.
 
JTrader said:
what i really wanted from this thread was for some people who do trade in a similar way 24/5 to give a few tips/feedback/advice about their experiences of doing so, and integrating this style of trading commitment into their lifestyle successfully, with minimum interference.
From the replies i have had so far, it seems that the concept of 24/5 trading off longer TF's is foreign to most here.
Click to expand...

hi JT,

regarding the lifestyle issue, i think it comes down to priorities, and this is independent from trading 24/5,

the more fundamental question is if you want your trading to direct your lifestyle, or you want a trading method that suits your lifestyle. :?:

i have found that i prefer my lifestyle to direct my trading method. but, just a matter of preference.

j
 
JTrader said:
what i really wanted from this thread was for some people who do trade in a similar way 24/5 to give a few tips/feedback/advice about their experiences of doing so, and integrating this style of trading commitment into their lifestyle successfully, with minimum interference.
From the replies i have had so far, it seems that the concept of 24/5 trading off longer TF's is foreign to most here.
Click to expand...

JTrader. With all due respect this sentiment seems to be a common complaint of yours in many of the myriad threads you initiate.

Ever wondered why?
 
rols said:
I presume you sleep alone?
Click to expand...
JT - I think Rols may be attempting to initiate a collaborative effort here. You’d have no trouble staying awake with this rough, tough, ruggedly handsome Cornishman sharing your budoir.

But should you slip into the gentle arms of Morpheus, it wont only be your position that potentially suffers.:eek:
 
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