Best Times To Trade

Best Times to Trade

One thing that I find more amusing than annoying now is trying to be on the screen at the "best" time to day trade. Previously the decision on what hours to trade were based entirely on volume. The more volume, the better the day-trading, was how our thinking went. It wasn't all that long ago, a few years ago perhaps, when US hours were considered "best". Those days are long gone now, despite the heavier volumes. My own forex mentor taught me that London hours are the best, so this is very much hard-wired into my head. Tokyo hours our thinking went, while a wildcard, were generally a temptation and a fade for day-traders. That assumption now, with a strong yen being such a powerful influence on so many of the other currency pairs, is just wrong. Below is a chart of EURJPY with volume. It's easy in this case to see how volume picks up right at midnight CST, or 6AM London, and just past lunch in Tokyo. In this case that's also when we see good "trend trade".

Traders have to make the decision as to when to trade based on both volume and what's best for their biological clock, or lifestyle. Despite my own biological clocks preference for getting up w/ the sun, the best time for me to get up to day-trade is, sigh, midnight, which doesn't fit my early to bed early to rise lifestyle. At least here in Chgo it doesn't...now if I lived somewhere in the Mediterranean...one of these days...

Jay Norris 800-971-2154
www.brewerfx.com/jnorris/http://www.brewerfuturesgroup.com/edu/jnorris/index.htm

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