Staying Out of the Market

[tripledtrader]

Mid-day is very difficult if you are trading equities (ie. 11am - 2pm ET). During this time it's typically just bots trading with other bots. And the bots are hungry at this time, so if you stick your toe in the water, they will try to game your order.

During early morning or late afternoon, there is more institutional flow, which makes it easier to trade, as the bots are busy gaming the big boys.

 

[Brass]

Quote from achilles28:

...Usually, the best advice is to pullback and trade higher time frames (10-15-30 mins etc). The sub 5 minute time frames alternate between trend and chop throughout the day and can trigger many losses...

Whereas these "higher time frames" bypass all that silliness?

 

[Newex]

Totally agree that you must refrain from trading especially at times you have a series of bad trades .

Not only patience is requitred but also a clear mind . A series of losing trades will cloud your judgement .

That doesnt mean that you wont monitor what the market ia doing . You just bench yourself to reevaluate your strategy and do some paper trading to regain confidence .

Ps Wht is that OP everyone is talking about . I 1st thought it was open position but not sure now

 

[R. Raskolnikov]

Not really, except maybe the week between Xmas and New years. And even then I usually always get at least 1 trade per day.

Also, maybe the last week in August but that also depends on the year. Some years, August is fairly tradeable.

Quote from Discipline101:

Do most people here subscribe to the idea that there are times when you should completely stay out of the market? I was reading an article about it, and the guy said just don't even trade for long long periods of time.

Is that true?

 

[Eddie Z]

Quote from Discipline101:

Do most people here subscribe to the idea that there are times when you should completely stay out of the market? I was reading an article about it, and the guy said just don't even trade for long long periods of time.

Is that true?

Statying out of the market is a way to measure your level of "coupling" with the market. This is one of the ways to determine if you have created a trading dependency. Many traders do that, so they can see that they can let go. It is a way to balance yourself and separate trading from your daily life.