overnight trading

[sooperthug]

Hi,

I am seriously considering trading FX and would like to know how those already trading FX who are in full time work manage their overnight positions if they take any.

How easy do you find it to trade whilst at work?
If you take on daily/ weekly / monthly positions how do you manage your overnight positions etc...

Hope thats clear. Thanks for any info.

[bicpetrisor]

the answer would be: stop-loss and take-profit
i use both of them, stop loss all the time, and take profit 90% of the time. before you take a psoition be sure that you know what you are doing, that you calculated the risk involved and that you have put the stop-loss. and then, when you wake up in the morning, first thing you do is check how you position is going.
i don't know how easy it is to trade whilst at work, because i'm in college :P

[swopejs]

bicpetrisor is absolutely correct: stop loss and take profit should be the key to anyone's profitable trading strategy, not just limited to overnight trading, trading while you work, etc.

I trade on the 15 min and the 1 hr charts, and if a position hasn't attained my "goal" and I need to go to bed, I simply rely upon my SL and TP to take me out of the trade.

At night, if my position is closed out, it plays a .wav file (I like "CHA-CHING" the best!), and if I'm awake and halfway interested, I will get up and look at what happened.

[initialsBB]

You asked about trading at work - and the answer is it's doable. One important thing that beginners often forget is that you have to do your homework long before you actually place the first trade. You should spend at least one month at defining, backtesting and refining the rules of trading. After that the work is neither time-consuming nor attention-intensive. All i have to do is take a look at the charts for 5 mins every hour or two.

[KNA]

If you work fulltime, obviously you cannot become a day trader (short term trader). I consider myself more of a mid-term trader. I place my trade orders at night usually using 60min, 240 min or daily charts. I assign a stoploss and a target price and go to sleep. I only monitor my trades before work and after work. But again I look for trades that in average last from 2 to 7 days. The hard part when working fulltime is not to manage the trades but to find the time to learn to trade. It took me 2 years to start trading successfully, but it can be done.

[ampris2000]

if you look at trends on the daily chart, you'll see they last several days to weeks from beginning to end.
once you have a trading strategy down, go with that.

or, learn to trade breakouts of trendlines and use limit orders to enter the market. i've done that a little with some success, but my strategy i feel comfortable with requires me to check the screen from time to time.

i did the trendlines/ limit orders at the library while i was waiting to get the internet connected. i wasn't even able to check it everyday. i had gained both weeks.

[sooperthug]

thanks for the replies guys- they've given me some food for thought. i think ill try to use elements of fibonachi to assist with exit points whilst using several leading indicators and MACD for entry points.

Im not entirely sure how much time ill stay in a trade but i think fibonachi and stop losses should help me with that.

Sorry for the delay in reply, ive been without PC access for a while - its good to be back!