What to trade when FOREX is quiet ?

[JumpOff]

Hi,
I am in the beginning stages of learning about trading in general, and FOREX in particular. I'll be starting with about 5K, and my expectations are to make tiny gains and even smaller losses scalping the EUR/USD or the USD/JPY. At the suggestion of several forum members, I plan to sign up with a regulated broker so that I can trade Globex currency futures, etc.. with direct access, lower commissions and 1 pip spreads.

My goal is to be up 2-10 pips on a good day, and down no more than 5 pips on a bad one. I'm not looking at this as an income plan at this point, just a way to learn a lot about entry and exit points, and getting real comfortable with a trading platform.

Since I have less than the required account size to trade individual stocks (U.S. day trading limits for small traders), I'm wondering what other markets will be good exercise yards for practicing my skills. I see that the currency markets sometimes move in beautiful trends, sometimes they just lay there becalmed. What do you all do when things are quiet?

Thanks,
JO

 

[neil]

Learn to sit on your hands.

No, I am not being facetious, it is a skill a trader must be able to master.

Today is Labor Day in the States, so go out into the sunshine and enjoy.

 

[CarpeUK]

Learn to sit on your hands.

No, I am not being facetious, it is a skill a trader must be able to master.

Today is Labor Day in the States, so go out into the sunshine and enjoy.

Have to agree with Neil. I made most of my trades on Sunday when the market re opened
GBP/USD: long (Open: 1.7746 current 17808) as you can see from trading last night 7pm UK time the market has moved about 62pips and I doubt if much more will happen now because of the US holiday.

I am currently monitoring a few currency pairs and they are not doing to much now.

If you want to trade I suggest you use a demo account, this is the time to practice scalping a few points and I mean only a few GBP/USD is not hardly moving and normally I can get a nice few pips this time of the day.

Hope this helps

 

[JumpOff]

Learn to sit on your hands.

No, I am not being facetious, it is a skill a trader must be able to master.

Today is Labor Day in the States, so go out into the sunshine and enjoy.

Best advice I've had yet!
JO

 

[TRADERguy]

Since you will be trading futures you might also want to take a look at the 10 year treasuries (zn). Not for the slow times but for trading on out of range economic releases when there is not enough liquidity to trade the currency futures.
Cheers,

TRADERguy

 

[JumpOff]

If you want to trade I suggest you use a demo account, this is the time to practice scalping a few points and I mean only a few GBP/USD is not hardly moving and normally I can get a nice few pips this time of the day.

Right. I've been doing some of that. And I did a little futures trading in ag commodities back when my family was farming. It was a different game back then. The commissions and spread were 2-3 times what they are now and the satellite data feed was delayed by about 5 min.

JO

 

[Remiraz]

My goal is to be up 2-10 pips on a good day, and down no more than 5 pips on a bad one. I'm not looking at this as an income plan at this point, just a way to learn a lot about entry and exit points, and getting real comfortable with a trading platform.

Its hard in FX to scalp 1-10 pips IMHO.

I traded the least noisy pair - EUR/USD.
Even for that the standard stop loss is about 15-20 pips. Noise is about 4-6 pips?

Which means most movement occuring under 15-20 pips is probably random and 4-6 pips moves are random.

If one is going to set 15-20 pips stop loss to filter out the noise, the take profit has to be about 30-40+ pips to get a good risk:reward ratio. (Or at least 20 pips to get 1:1)

No wonder why a lot of people say they aim for big moves and trends in FX instead of short moves. Even simple bounce off sup/res comes with 15-20 pips noise!

 

[CarpeUK]

For the last week i have been testing my EOD trading and so far it is going ok. The close time of most currencies are 5pm EST 10pm UK time.

I check my end of day charts and depending on what my indicators tell me i trade.

overnight i can make a nice few pips, last night i made 40 whilst sleeping