I would love to trade on 5-15m timeframe but I find myself losing a lot more trades on them. I’ve been winning a lot more trades currently on the 1d chart; I am on a 7 win streak. I would love to know more about the popular timeframes among swing traders or day traders.
I get direction and confluence from the higher timeframes, but I look for setups on the 3 min. Personally, the 5 min and above is too slow, and the 1 min is too fast. The 3 min is right in the middle and it works for me.
Correct. Trades typically take 1-8 hours to play out.
4h for setup; 1h-30m adjusting zones and see better how the price action is around these zones; 15m entry.
1 minute - I can get in and out fairly quick; the average length of my trades is about 33 mins, which suits me perfectly.
Vin said:
1 minute - I can get in and out fairly quick; the average length of my trades is about 33 mins, which suits me perfectly.
I have failed to master the 1 minute timeframe. This is exactly how I would want to trade. Are your targets on the M1?
@Leonard
My targets are variable depending on what I see on higher timeframes and what the markets are setting up. If I think markets will make a bigger move, I sometimes set a target and let the price get to the TP, or I manage the trade manually without a TP in place. The latter can be dangerous though because often you find yourself letting good trades turn into breakevens. To mitigate this, you have to have a number of rules on how to properly manage the trade and when to take profit. This aspect of trading has personally been hard to overcome and it is still under development in my system.
@Leonard
Another thing to mention is that you have to think of placing targets on the 1m. If you place targets on a higher timeframe, you risk a higher probability of getting taken out. Possibly gradually increasing TP to a higher TF but still with higher risk of the price coming down and taking you out.
15min.
15 minute is gold. 3h setup.
Hourly chart is where I’ve done best.
Daily time frame.
For me, 1hr; it guides the direction, then I wait for 15 minute to align accordingly to take entries.
1m, but the targets need to be of at least 1H timeframe. Even better if it overlaps with some major timeframe, like weekly/monthly.
I use 5 minute because I can get trades that hit TP quicker.
4h, 8h, daily & weekly.
4hr and 1hr for setup, scale down to 5min to watch for any possible entries; if I want to be more precise, I will scale into the 1min timeframe.
None. Because I don’t need to know things about something that didn’t happen. Seriously, why TF am I going to draw a bar if price didn’t move enough for me to care or profit from?
Timeframe just changes your historical visualization. That’s not what makes you profitable or unprofitable.
I never went to an auction and busted out historical price charts to buy a PacMan because it doesn’t f*ing matter. Ultimately an auction is an auction; I’m buying for whatever the market price is and trying to profit on the sell. If it takes one day for price to move, great. If it takes one month, that’s fine too. So I can make life a lot easier by just ignoring the times when nothing happened.
Don’t underestimate the power of ignoring things.
@Blair
Logical. My first month in trading, I was winning left and right. It all crumbled when I made it complicated.