One of the reasons newbie forex traders don’t do as well as they should is because they’re usually trading the wrong time frame for their personality.
New forex traders will want to get rich quick so they’ll start trading small time frames like the 1-minute or 5-minute charts.
Then they end up getting frustrated when they trade because the time frame doesn’t fit their personality.
Know which time frame you should trade on as a forex trader.
For some forex traders, they feel most comfortable trading the 1-hour charts.
This time frame is longer, but not too long, and trade signals are fewer, but not too few.
Trading in this time frame helps give more time to analyze the market and not feel rushed.
It depends on your personality. You have to feel comfortable with the time frame you’re trading in.
You’ll always feel some kind of pressure or sense of frustration when you’re in a trade because real money is involved.
That’s natural.
But you shouldn’t feel that the reason for the pressure is because things are happening so fast that you find it difficult to make decisions or so slowly that you get frustrated.
When we first started trading, we couldn’t stick to a time frame.
This is natural for all new forex traders until you find your comfort zone.
Some of the basic time frames and the differences between each.
You also have to consider the amount of capital you have to trade.
Shorter time frames allow you to make better use of margin and have tighter stop losses.
Larger time frames require bigger stops, thus a bigger account, so you can handle the market swings without facing a margin call.
The most important thing to remember is that whatever time frame you choose to trade, it should naturally fit your personality.
If you feel a little uncomfortable like your undies are loose or your pants are a little too short, then maybe it’s just not the right fit.
When the market stalls or reverse on the 15-minute chart, it was often because it had hit support or resistance on a larger time frame.
It took a couple of hundred negative pips to learn that the larger the time frame, the more likely an important support or resistance levels would hold.
See the Big Picture
Trading using multiple time frames has probably kept us out of more losing trades than any other one thing alone.
It will allow you to stay in a trade longer because you’re able to identify where you are relative to the BIG PICTURE.
Most beginners look at only one-time frames.
They grab a single time frame, apply their indicators, and ignore other time frames.
The problem is that a new trend, coming from another time frame, often hurts forex traders who don’t look at the big picture.
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