Over the past six months i have spent around four hours per night and entire weekends devoted to learning how to trade, how to research stocks and how to apply technical analysis. I now feel confident enough to begin trading on the nasdaq with my hard earned cash.Which brings me to my problem - I am conflicted between the style of trading that will suite my routine, or more specifically, the style that will best fit around my job, lifestyle and my bias towards technical analysis and pennystocks (50p to £10) - this means not getting the sack for looking at charts whilst I'm supposed to be working and not completely abandoning my young family. A tough ask, but I think that this is manageable. Let me explain... I live in the UK and work somewhat flexible hours. My current start and end time is 07:30 while 03:30 GMT, which means that I get home around 04:15 GMT (11:15 EST) apart from Fridays when i finish at noon (07:30 EST). So for the most part of the week I get home after the most volatile period of the day has just ended. This bugs me somewhat, which is why i have included an option three in my trading styles list below. Option 1) would be to drive home after work and use the lunchtime lull to spend checking my watch list for anything in play during the afternoon session, making sure that I am square by the end of the day; leaving me with only a small window of opportunity to turn a profit. Another negative is that i will be almost guaranteed to watch a pattern develop that i want to trade on a daily chart, only for me to miss a large part of the opportunity or to miss the opportunity entirely by the afternoon. This of course would be classed as day trading, or rather day trading the afternoon session. Option 2) is to swing trade using daily charts only - from what i have observed so far, this would provide more reliable eastern and western pattern convergence. The negative of this though, and its a big one, is in leaving a position open overnight and all morning. I wouldn't want to rely on stop loss orders to get me out of dodge and cant guarantee i will be able to look at the charts during work at all times. Option 3) this is sort of a hybrid of option 1 and option 2 and is my preferred option for trading but i'm not sure that it will fit my family life. This would be to work until 13:30 GMT (08:30 EST) at which point i would take an extended lunch break. Allowing me to trade the morning session, square any trades before noon and then complete an extra few hours at work before driving home, at which point I would either setup for the afternoon session or just relax, depending on how the morning session went. Option 4) go stick all my money on black, cross my figures and say a prayer in 7 different languages! But joking aside, any advise would be greatly appreciated! Especially from people who have managed to hold down a full time job and either day trade or swing trade. Almost forgot to mention, my aim\ agenda in all of this is to one day trade for a living, I've read a few articles about people just leaving their day job with little experience and or capital. Which sounds like disaster to me, so i have made a vow to myself to spend time mastering this art and only consider thinking about quitting my job after becoming consistency profitable; and if that day never comes then i have one of the most expensive hobbies in the world . For those that are interested, my initial budget\capital is a very modest $3000 BUT this is topped up monthly with around $800 of completely, will not cry if i lose it all, disposable income. Sorry for the long post and thanks for reading. Andy
Why do you mention US time if you're in the UK...do you plan to trade the US market instead of the UK? In my opinion, one can't successfully daytrade or trade part time only -- you need to give it your full attention. Build your capital and experience...then do it full time....you will either succeed or fail. If you don't like that proposition, then consider just investing that money in a general market long-term mutual fund. You can't just trade part time like you're just looking at sports scores on your cellphone. Who knows, maybe you can...but i'm just speaking from my perspective.
Swing trade daily charts. I do this, and I wish that I had your schedule. When you swing trade daily charts, you need the current day's candle to be established before you can make a decision. Sometimes the morning volatility can fool you. If I did my own system perfectly correctly, I should wait until near the end of the trading day to buy in, but most times I can guess correctly. So the schedule you are suggestion would work well. There is often a reversal during lunch time in the U.S., which would help you with you buy in too, or which you may need to wait out. Lastly, you shouldn't have much fear of holding overnight. Just diversify to help you with it. As long as you own the stocks outright (low leverage), you can't get hurt too bad if you're wrong.
Hi Lawrence, yes I plan to trade the U.S. Markets. There are just so many stocks to choose from in the U.S. Allowing me to trade the patterns I really like. The biggest advantage for me though, is that I could potentially play the morning and afternoon session whilst working full time due to the time difference and the flexible hours that I work (option3). If I was to take an extended lunch in order to catch the pre-market and the morning session it would be done at my desk at work. As it stands right now, without changing my hours at work I would be home by 11:15 Est. My short / medium term goal is not really to make money straight away, although that would be nice, but rather to learn how to trade - my thoughts are that with real money I will be more inclined to trade as I would full time.
Smart money, thanks for your reply. I certainly won't be using leverage, far too risky for me! I hav a few questions for you if you have time. Do you trade full time then? How long do you typically hold your trades and how many concurrent positions do you hold? What is your balance between time spent doing fundamental analysis vs technical analysis?
Bsam, is this regarding day trading, swing trading or both? If you have time, please explain. Thanks.
I do not think you have to decide on day or swing, and it could certainly be a combination of both. Sometimes great day trades become even better swing trades. Why exit completely if it is working. I have a lot of students that trade from Europe in the US markets and they have full time jobs, when they are done, they come on the chat room and trade for a few hours.
i think here you talking about very considerable time frame, probably 10-15 years also 3k is not enough, imho u will need at least 50k