subject: Full-time Forex Trading - Be Careful About Overtrading [print this page] There's a common belief that anyone who trades the forex markets full-time is actively placing lots of trades every single day. However whilst there may be some traders who trade this way, this is generally not the case because many people find position trading to be just as profitable, if not more so.
The fact is that you don't necessarily make any more money by opening more positions. For example it's quite possible that you could open around 100 positions every week and generate a clear profit of around 300 points on average, after deducting all the losses.
Alternatively you could spend all of your time looking for one perfect set-up each week. If you are successful you could easily generate a profit of around 300 points or more if you use a longer time frame, and I think you'll agree that this is a lot easier to do.
If you've been trading the currency markets for a while you will know that whichever trading system you employ, there are always occasions when you get a perfect set-up. So you basically just need to watch the markets and wait for one of these opportunities to arise.
Forex trading is a tough profession at the best of times, and it's particularly difficult when trying to trade the short-term charts because you have so much noise to deal with. So my advice would always be to lengthen your time frame and focus on finding fewer positions on the 1 hour, 4 hour or daily chart, for instance.
Just one decent set-up each week is enough to generate a full-time living. I would describe myself as a full-time trader and I only tend to generate two or three trades per week on average using nothing more than the 4 hour and daily charts.
I've tried short-term trading but I soon discovered it's not for me, simply because it's quite stressful and not very enjoyable. I much prefer sitting back and studying the 4 hour and daily charts of the various different currency pairs in order to find one or two high probability set-ups.
Everyone is different of course and you may well enjoy scalping the markets every day. However if you want to become a full-time forex trader, you don't really want to be tied to your computer all day long. I find that if you just keep an eye on the markets and pay particular attention when a decent set-up is presenting itself, then you will have plenty of time to do other things as well during the day, which makes the whole thing a lot more enjoyable, and just as profitable in most cases.
