11 Oct Choosing multiple time frames

Choosing multiple time frames

As part of writ­ing my trad­ing plan I am writ­ing this arti­cle on using mul­ti­ple time frames. Togeth­er with choos­ing which time frames I will incor­po­rate my strat­e­gy on how to trade these. This I will then test out and let you know what my expe­ri­ences are with them. The arti­cle that brought me to try this out is from the good peo­ple at babypips.com. 

DISCLAIMER

Click here for my dis­claimer. It basi­cal­ly says that I am on my path to becom­ing a trad­er and these are just my opin­ions on how to approach learn­ing to trade. Feel free to check it out and com­ment on it.

Here it goes…

The recur­ring idiot

After read­ing that arti­cle on www.babypips.com I said to myself: “you idiot”. Makes total sense to use only 3 time frames. I was look­ing at too many charts. The dai­ly, 4 hourly, 1 hourly, 30-minute, 15-min and final­ly the 5‑minute chart. So now that I estab­lished I am an idiot I have to choose the time frames that I want to test out first. Believe me, there will be more moments where I will shine as an idiot. Just keep fol­low­ing me. 

Choos­ing time frames

So how do you go about choos­ing what time frames to use? I based mine on how ‘active’ I am when I am trad­ing. Com­bine this with how active I’d like to be and I am left with the small­est time frames. I under­stand that this will require a lot of focus on my part but I am will­ing to try it out. In the end that is ‘all’ that you need to do. Try things out to see what fits your per­son­al­i­ty and trad­ing style. So the time frames that I am going to trade are the 1‑minute, 5‑minute, and the 30-minute chart.

How to look at these charts?

I will use the 30-minute chart to deter­mine the main trend. If the 30-minute shows me that there’s an uptrend I will only look for long posi­tions and vice ver­sa for a down­trend. On the 5‑minute chart I deter­mine the cur­rent mar­ket bias to con­firm price action is still fol­low­ing the main trend that we see on the 30-minute chart. On the 1‑minute chart I will time my entries and exits. 

Test that sh*t

I need to deter­mine a peri­od for test­ing this ‘new’ approach. It should be long enough to actu­al­ly give it a try but if you ‘feel’ like it’s not going to work you should not spend too much time on it. I will try these time frames for a week and review my find­ings on how it felt like trad­ing them. Based on this I will either decide to extend using these time frames or switch to oth­ers. I’ll let you know how it goes. 

Thank you

Thank you again for read­ing and fol­low­ing me on my jour­ney to becom­ing a trad­er. I am pas­sion­ate about this and am con­vinced that I can be a trad­er. I under­stand it takes time because every­thing you want to be good at takes time. Please com­ment below on your jour­ney or email me.