Sleeping issue with day trading, Should I continue?

D

doubledoubledoublecup

After I made my transition from scalping ES minute TF to day trading multiple products holding from minutes to days, I improved my profitability, but my trading hour had also gone up so much.

Back when I was scalping ES, I usually do 5-6 trading in active hours and call it a day. Now since I try to catch major intra day reversal, I watch Asian Open then London Open, then US session. Sometimes if I have an opened position, I will have trouble falling into sleep, or I'll wake up every 2 hour checking on quote. Now I averaged 3-4 hours of sleep during trading days.

Is having sleeping issue a common thing for swing trader and is it worth the time? Trading larger timeframe offered so much better RR compared to scalping only the index. I really couldn't find an ES scalping strategy that give me close to a 2 Profit Factor consistently.
 
Welcome to day and night trading.
I am doing it full time.

I trade the early ASIAN/EUROPEAN/US sessions.

I was a WORKAHOLIC trading extremely long hours.
Nowadays I trade about 6 hours a day, and I sleep alot, and exercise 2 or 3 times a DAY

Soon you will find the appropriate timetable
 
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doubledoubledoublecup said:
Is having sleeping issue a common thing for swing trader and is it worth the time?
More...

The whole point of swing trading is so you don't HAVE to spend all hours of the day staring at charts.

What you have is "open-trade anxiety", where you obsess every waking moment over where your position is, even when trying to sleep.

You just set your targets and stops and let it be, and get on with your life. The trade will resolve as it will without you staring at it, egging it on, which is a scalpers' mindset.

You have become stuck in what I call the "transition trader paradox", where you try to distance yourself from scalping by going longer-term, but cannot shake the habit of looking at charts.

I once was where you are now. Even though I had the stops and targets in place, I would WANT to check the positions as often as I could, juts to "see where I was at".

With my trading on hold, I still do it while I am out and about during my day, just to see "where the market is at right now", for the hell of it.

I understand your issue, and you're going to have to face the fact that you must take some form of sleeping aid until you can convince your mind to not wake you up every 90 minutes to "check the markets".
 
I used to stay awake until US markets closed at 5:00 and then wait for the Japanese open at I believe it was 8:30, basically going to sleep when everyone is waking up. Then I tried to be up for the Japanese close which was something like 14:30. It was completely unsustainable. You can do a sprint with these hours but it shouldn't become your normal.
 
doubledoubledoublecup said:
After I made my transition from scalping ES minute TF to day trading multiple products holding from minutes to days, I improved my profitability, but my trading hour had also gone up so much.

Back when I was scalping ES, I usually do 5-6 trading in active hours and call it a day. Now since I try to catch major intra day reversal, I watch Asian Open then London Open, then US session. Sometimes if I have an opened position, I will have trouble falling into sleep, or I'll wake up every 2 hour checking on quote. Now I averaged 3-4 hours of sleep during trading days.

Is having sleeping issue a common thing for swing trader and is it worth the time? Trading larger timeframe offered so much better RR compared to scalping only the index. I really couldn't find an ES scalping strategy that give me close to a 2 Profit Factor consistently.
More...
Hello doubledoubledoublecup,

Will the 3-4 hours of sleep per day last for more than a year?
 
doubledoubledoublecup said:
After I made my transition from scalping ES minute TF to day trading multiple products holding from minutes to days, I improved my profitability, but my trading hour had also gone up so much.

Back when I was scalping ES, I usually do 5-6 trading in active hours and call it a day. Now since I try to catch major intra day reversal, I watch Asian Open then London Open, then US session. Sometimes if I have an opened position, I will have trouble falling into sleep, or I'll wake up every 2 hour checking on quote. Now I averaged 3-4 hours of sleep during trading days.
More...
What exactly are you trading that you must monitor them around the clock? Sleep deprivation is not only bad for your health but it can literally mess up your cognitive ability to think fast, which is absolutely critical as a trader.

My advice is that if you are so stressed out about your position that you can't sleep, reduce your risk exposure by lightening up the lot size. Moreover, don't trade so many instruments. Focus on just 1 or 2 that you know like the back of your hand. Also know that there are many other ways to trade than just directional. For example, pair trading (eg. wheat/corn) or trading the spread (eg. calendar spread) are strategies that can offer profit potential with relatively low risk.
 
doubledoubledoublecup said:
After I made my transition from scalping ES minute TF to day trading multiple products holding from minutes to days, I improved my profitability, but my trading hour had also gone up so much.

Back when I was scalping ES, I usually do 5-6 trading in active hours and call it a day. Now since I try to catch major intra day reversal, I watch Asian Open then London Open, then US session. Sometimes if I have an opened position, I will have trouble falling into sleep, or I'll wake up every 2 hour checking on quote. Now I averaged 3-4 hours of sleep during trading days.

Is having sleeping issue a common thing for swing trader and is it worth the time? Trading larger timeframe offered so much better RR compared to scalping only the index. I really couldn't find an ES scalping strategy that give me close to a 2 Profit Factor consistently.
More...

You'll find a lot of brothers in the crypto space, they behave like you.

It looks like you need some sort of alert to let you sleep properly. Maybe look for a developer who can connect to an API and prepare alerts for you. That won't cost you much.
 
doubledoubledoublecup said:
After I made my transition from scalping ES minute TF to day trading multiple products holding from minutes to days, I improved my profitability, but my trading hour had also gone up so much.

Back when I was scalping ES, I usually do 5-6 trading in active hours and call it a day. Now since I try to catch major intra day reversal, I watch Asian Open then London Open, then US session. Sometimes if I have an opened position, I will have trouble falling into sleep, or I'll wake up every 2 hour checking on quote. Now I averaged 3-4 hours of sleep during trading days.

Is having sleeping issue a common thing for swing trader and is it worth the time? Trading larger timeframe offered so much better RR compared to scalping only the index. I really couldn't find an ES scalping strategy that give me close to a 2 Profit Factor consistently.
More...

So, how profitable are you doing this...? :)

It goes without saying that this isn't sustainable. Anyone who tries to function on too little sleep over time will learn it the hard way. Additionally, your stress levels are highly likely elevated both during day and night.

Bottom line is it can work for a short period of time, but not as a way of life. So, I'd strongly advice you find a new schedule.

Personally, as a (day) trader of US index futures, I skipped Asia completely as it's rare anything happens there. The European session is usually a good one, but I have other responsibilities during the day, so I pretty much skipped that one, too, and focus mostly on the US RTH session.

Maybe you just need to accept that you can't catch every single move?

PS: I still sleep too little myself, but make sure to get a very bare minimum of 5 hours of interrupted sleep. Usually I get 6 in the weekdays. Occasionally 7. 8-10 in the weekends. Anything less in the weekdays and I'm a zombie just struggling to function.

I burned out severly in my early 20s and I attribute most of it to a lack of sleep over a long period of time.
 
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