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In today’s episode, I’ll share with you the truth on how much time you should spend on trading and analysing the markets (it’s not what you think).
So listen to it now…
Resources
How to use multiple timeframes to improve your trading entries
How to Become a Professional Trader (It’s Not What You Think)
Transcript
Hey, hey, what’s up my friend?
In today’s episode, I want to talk about how much time should you be spending to analyse and trade the markets.
There are a few factors to this…
1. Your timeframe
Clearly, the time spent between someone who trades on a Daily timeframe versus someone who trades on the 5-Minutes timeframe will be greatly different.
Let’s say you trade on a Daily timeframe. This means that every 24-hour, one candle will be formed. It doesn’t make sense to be looking at the charts every hour, every 15 or 30 minutes, because the candle will not be formed. It’s still in the process of forming.
So the higher timeframe you go, the less time you’ll spend trading and analysing the markets because of the fact that the candles take a longer time to form.
On the other hand, if you trade on the 5-Minutes timeframe, this is where you need to spend more time analysing and trading the markets because the market moves faster.
Every 5 minutes, a new candle is formed. And when the price breaks out of resistance, you have to decide, do you buy now or wait for a retest? If the market moves in your favour, do you take profit now or do you hold onto the trade longer to trail your stop loss?
You can see that a lot of decision making happens much faster on the lower timeframe compared to the higher timeframe.
So the first factor is your timeframe:
- The lower timeframe you go, the more time you’ll spend analysing and trading the markets.
- The higher your timeframe, the less time is required.
Next…
2. Your experience
Experience plays a part as well.
For new traders, they spend a lot of time trading and analysing the markets.
They look anywhere from the 5-Minutes, 30-Minutes, 4 Hour, Daily to the Weekly timeframe, or up and down.
And when they get a trading setup, let’s say on a Daily timeframe, they down to the lower timeframe to look for confirmation to see whether the trade is moving in their favour etc.
So traders with less experience spend a lot of time trading and analysing the markets.
But for more experienced traders who know what they’re looking for, who have a good idea of their trading setup, won’t spend much time analysing and trading the markets because they already know what to look for. They’re not all over the place.
For example, I trade off the 4-Hour and Daily timeframe. I know the setup I’m looking for. If the price comes into support and gets a price rejection, I’m looking to buy. If I trade off the 4-Hour timeframe, that means I only need to look at the charts once every 4 hours.
So experience also plays a part.
Those with less experience are generally glued to the screen all day long trying to find something that moves.
Whereas experienced traders are mainly on the side-lines, letting the market come to them and they would “hunt” it down right when the trading setup comes. So they are more like a lion.
And finally…
3. Your productivity
The more time spent on analysing and trading the market doesn’t really make you more productive.
But there are two sides to this.
For new traders, I agree that you’ll spend more time analysing the markets because this is when you start to read the charts, the price action, identify support, resistance. And for all this, you need screen time.
But once you have understood and nailed down that part after a couple of years, then more time spent will not make you a better trader or a more productive trader.
In fact, as you have more experience, the more time you spend trading and analysing the markets, the worse your results will be.
Because usually what happens, is that you’re over-trading, you’re finding a trading setup that isn’t there. You’re finding something to do when you shouldn’t be doing anything at all.
So there are two sides to this:
Spending more time doesn’t mean you’re more productive. But for people new to trading, you definitely need more screen time to watch the market and the price, how it goes up and down, etc. Okay.
So with regards to how much time you should spend analysing and trading the markets, I hope that makes sense to you.
With that said I’ve come towards the end of today’s episode and I’ll talk to you soon.