Tutorial Forex

One of the best ways to succeed in forex trading is to trade a time frame that fits your personality. There are three major time frames categorized as day trading, swing trading and position trading. Now let’s take a look at each time frame style to help you decide which is best for you to trade.

Day trading is also known as intraday trading and positions are entered and exited within the same day if not within minutes of entry. Also known as scalping trades are quick with usually smaller size and multiple trades are taken each day.

There are many advantages of day trading which include very little risk is taken upon by traders as they tend to trade small size with tight stop losses and take profit levels. Intraday trading requires intense focus as traders watch each market tick and manage their positions.

There are always downsides to everything and with day trading you can loss money extremely rapidly as well as due to the amount of trades taken intraday traders pay a high level of brokers fees through commissions or the spread. Small mistakes like not respecting the stop loss levels can turn into very steep losses in a short amount of time or even worse blow out an account.

Swing trades can last from anywhere from one day to several days or even weeks. Typically swing traders try to catch price retraces or trend reversals using indicators or price action to help tell the tale of the tape. Using swing highs and lows from recent price action traders use these points of reference for placing their entries and exits.

The pros of swing trading include it tends to be easier to manage trades than day trading as well as more traders are profitable as swing traders. The spread has less of an impact than it does on intraday trading therefore traders do not waste money on broker commissions.

The downside or cons of swing trading is that traders can get emotional attached to their trades and expected outcome allowing trades to spiral out of control and turn what should had been a small loss into a large loser.

Otherwise known as the buy and hold method, position trading is known as a trend trading style where traders build themselves into large positions over days, weeks and even months trying to profit when the market is trending. Often traders are able to get themselves into a snowball situation when the markets is running with them.

Position trading pros include it is the easiest method to trade and profit from as will as easiest time frame to be able to fit into an active lifestyle. Preparation can be done at your leisure and traders only require little of their time to actually place any new trades or adjust any orders.

The biggest fear of any trend trader needs to be getting a losing position and holding it too long hoping it would come back. Often position traders can wipe out their entire trading accounts when they not only hold a position too long but actually average into losing positions.

Knowing what time frame is going to fit you best is very important when it comes to your success. Spend some time really thinking about how active you want to be as a trader, what feels the best for you and then try to build a strategy around that. Once you are comfortable trading one time you will have the experience to actually be able to trade the other times frame even better which will help your trading grow.

The best way to learn forex trading is by trading along side other traders.