In 2018 it seems like we are running out of time. Everyone is always busy. Ask someone how their week has been and the response will be something along the lines of “Oh, the usual, I’ve been busy”.
They’ll often talk about how they would love to learn a new skill, or remodel their kitchen, but they just don’t have the time.
We hear this all the time when it comes to trading forex. People are interested and want to learn how to trade forex but they think they don’t have the time.
In this article I am going to show you how you can find the time to trade forex.
Learning How To Trade
Before I get into it, forex trading is not something you need to spend 8 hours a day on. A lot of traders use forex as a side income. Experienced traders often spend only 30 minutes to an hour a day looking at their charts!
The trading part isn’t the problem.
The problem is getting to the point where you can spend only 30 minutes on your charts. When you think about learning something you often get this image of someone surrounded by a bunch of books, spending two to three hours each day to memorise everything.
Here’s the good news : you don’t need to do this with forex. Don’t be mistaken, you will be spending quite some time learning how to trade, but it’s not as much as you think.
For example: you can learn how to read a chart in 20 minutes. Once you’ve seen an explanation, going back to the charts is automatically going to refresh your memory. At first, you might use a little cheat sheet but you won’t need it for very long.
Before you know it, you’ll be able to glance at a chart and know what’s happening in an instant! Being able to read a chart quickly will be crucial to your trading, so it’s best to start with reading charts before getting into a strategy.
Don’t get too excited though! Burnout is an issue that many traders face. When you are learning your strategy, take your time.
You don’t need to memorise anything for a test. There is no time pressure other than the pressure you put on yourself.
Forex trading is all about the long-term. You’ll come to learn this with time and experience. Once you’ve found a way to fit the learning into your busy schedule, you’ll have done most of the work.
When learning the strategy is out of the way, you can replace that time you’ve set aside for learning with actual trading. Once you’ve reached that point, you’ll also be more flexible with your time.
Let’s have a look at how to actually find the time to learn and trade forex.
Finding Time for Forex
Do you have 30 minutes a day you can spend on learning how to read charts, or learning a strategy? You might think you don’t, but I will show you that you do. If you’re a commuter, you’re the lucky one!
The time spent on the train, the bus or the tram is the perfect time to learn. Most people use that time to listen to a podcast or maybe read a book, but if you are interested in learning forex, you can easily set aside this time to focus on forex for a little while.
As we’ve mentioned before, you won’t need a lot of time to learn. Once you’ve done the work you can go back to reading your books or listening to your podcasts! If you’re not a commuter it might seem like you really do not have the time.
No worries! Here’s a handy little trick for you : keep a time diary. For a week or two, divide your days up into time blocks and write down what you did for each hour.
You’ll quickly notice that there’s some hours where you don’t know what you did or you watched tv, played a game or relaxed. These blocks of times are the ones you can take 30 minutes from and learn about forex instead.
I can already hear you protesting. You don’t want to give up your hobby, you need time to wind down. Of course! You don’t have to give anything up.
But if you really want to trade forex, you need to free up some time so you can learn how to trade. Once you’ve gotten past that hurdle, you don’t need that extra time anymore. Plus, you’re only cutting of 30 minutes!
The trick with finding time is being efficient with it. Let’s say you have learnt a strategy and are ready to start demo trading – or maybe you are ready to live trade! If you have a busy schedule you may think you don’t have a slot to fit any trading in.
No need to worry. If you’ve been setting aside time to learn how to trade, you can now use those time slots for trading instead.
However, it is possible that those time slots won’t be compatible with the kind of trading you want to do. So, here’s a few tricks on how to be more efficient with your time.
Economic Calendars
Firstly, save yourself time at the start of each week and check out an economic calendar. News can impact trades.
If there are upcoming news events that may impact price, set an alarm on your phone. Make it easy for yourself! You don’t need to go and check a calendar everytime you look at your charts.
We advise people to check their charts at least once a day, preferably twice. This can be difficult, but you can be efficient with this.
Reduce your watchlist
If you are really stuck for time, reduce the pairs you watch. If you have 20 pairs to get through, it’s going to take more time. Managing your watchlist is going to help you out a lot.
You can either check the charts at the start of the day or the end of a day. When you do, highlight the pairs that could give setups. How? Alarms. You can set price alarms so that if price reaches a certain level, you are notified.
You don’t need to stare at a chart and wait for price to move. If you use TradingView you can make use of the flagged watchlists and flag the pairs with possible setups.
Pending Orders
Let’s take this one step further. Pending orders are going to be a big time gain. If you spot a potential setup and you know you won’t have time to check the charts for the rest of the day, set a pending order. You set the entry point, stop loss, and take profit ahead of time.
If price reaches your entry point, you don’t need to do a thing. You will automatically be entered into that trade. That 30 minutes of analysis you did in the morning/evening? It has now resulted in a trade and you didn’t even have to dedicate anymore time to it!
Getting Started
To help you get started, I cover the basics here. You’ll be surprised how much you already know and how quickly you’ll learn this stuff. Those 30 minutes will seem like no time at all! I even introduce you to my strategy already!
There you have it, you now have time for forex!