Podcast:

What Does Your Trading Day Look Like
In this video:
00:25 – How to structure your trading day
01:06 – You’re not going to be a full-time trader immediately
01:46 – Fit your trading around your current situation
02:10 – My trading day
03:45 – Looking at different time frame charts
04:32 – Looking at the changeover of different time frame charts
05:16 – Live trades on live webinars. Trade hit profit
06:15 – Trading in 30 minutes a day
What does your trading day look like? Let’s talk about that and more right now.
Hey traders, Andrew Mitchem here at The Forex Trading Coach. Welcome to video and podcast number 355.
How to structure your trading day
I want to answer a question that I get asked quite a lot about, how somebody should structure their trading day and also what does my personal trading day look like? So let’s talk about that because it’s really important that as a trader you have a plan, you have a structure and that you have a routine. Why? Well, because you never really know what the market’s going to do and you need to be there… In my opinion, you need to be looking at the same type of charts and the same time of day as often as you can. And that just gives you consistency over time and you get to understand how the market works and its characteristics, et cetera. And now, obviously we’re trading, to do it properly you’ve got to enjoy it.
You’re not going to be a full-time trader immediately
Now for most people, realistically, you’re not going to be a full time trader, at least to start with. You’re going to have other commitments, family, jobs, sport, music, whatever it might be. And the problem is, is that right now there seems to be a bit of a movement around the so called sort of work hard lifestyle kind of gurus out there. And they’re sort of getting into this, you’ve got to keep going, going, going, going, going, go to work sort of 12, 14, 16 hour weeks, just got to keep going, and going, and going.
The problem is for those people that do that, first of all there’s no fun and secondly is, how on earth do you fit something new in like trading around that?
Fit your trading around your current situation
So for me it’s almost flip it the other way around. You’ve got to make the trading fit in around what you’re currently doing, especially if you’re not trading full time to start with. So for me personally, I think that less is more. I’ve always thought in terms of trading less is more. The less you interfere with the trade, the better you do. The less time you’re staring at your screen and your charts the better you do. And that has just been a proven case.
My trading day
So to give you an idea of how I structure my day, and bear in mind I’m in New Zealand, which is on a completely different time zone to most other countries around the world, is that you need to sort of base yourself on the New York time as well. So wherever you live in the world make that kind of adjustment. So for me, I wake up about six o’clock in the morning, kids are off to school by about quarter past seven and from then on I have a quick look at the charts about what’s happened over night my time into the later European session, and the US session. Getting an idea of what’s happened to my open positions, have they made profit or loss, just have a quick scan through the market. And then at around 10:30 my time, which is just before the 11 o’clock change over of the daily charts, I’ll then have a more serious look at what’s happening in the market.
So that is based on the 5:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, New York close of day. So around 4:30 PM Eastern Standard, which for me is the next day at 10:30 AM,