Quote from OddTrader:
Practically there would be Almost impossible to select a different timeframe each day among 11 timeframes (2min, 3min, 5min, 10min, 15min, 30min, 60min, 120min, daily, weekly and monthly).
I don't understand the followings:
You need to monitor all 11 timefrmaes just 1-minute, and say the market changed 0.1%, before your daily trading every day's openning, otherwise you don't know which one is the best option for the day.
When trading currently with a monthly timeframe today, are you going to change to a diffrent timefrmae tomorrow?
Anyway your fairly Logical comments are quite interesting. Bye.
I think the reason why your having a difficult time in understanding is that your making the assumption that you wake up
each trading day and must
FIRST determine what charting interval will be used prior to knowing what your going to be trading, prior to knowing what type of trader you are and prior to knowing what type of trades your going to be doing for the trading day...
Reverse your thinking and you'll know what chart interval is suitable for you regardless if your trading stocks, futures, forex, derivatives or whatever.
Simply, your trying to put your pants on first before putting on your underwear and shoes.
What I'm saying is you must
FIRST determine what type of trader you are.
That first step will eliminate some of the intervals from among your favorite chart intervals.
Next...prior to trading of the day...go over your trading plan and determine what type of trading your going to be doing that day...
What trading instrument are you going to be trading?
Are you going to be scalping?
Are you going to be looking for day trades (non scalping)?
Are you going to be looking for position trades that may be held overnight?
Are you going to be looking for swing trades that may last several trading days or more?
Are you looking for a long term postion that may last weeks or months?
Do you see anything interesting in your pre-market preparation before the trading day?
Answering the above questions
PRIOR to your trading day in your morning preparation should eliminate more of intervals of choice from your favorites.
Let me give you a more microscopic an example if you still don't understand.
Whenever I trade Treasury Futures...I only do it as a swing trader during
2 particular months out of the trading year.
Now...read that above statement again and very carefully.
Now...lets eliminate some intervals from among my favorites (2min, 3min, 5min, 10min, 15min, 30min, 60min, 120min, daily, weekly and monthly).
Do you think I'm going to use the 2min chart interval to make a trade decision for a trade that's going to last many trading days or longer?
In case your wondering I don't use the 2min, 3min, 5min, 10min chart interval for swing trading
* (I've now put on my underwear first)
Now...lets pretend today is the start of those 2 months of swing trading the Treasury Futures.
Therefore, I'm not going to be scalping nor day trading nor position trading the Treasury Futures because I know what type of trading I'm going to be doing in a particular trading instrument during a specific time span of the trading year as a swing trader.
Here are my intervals of choice from among my favorites I mentioned earlier:
15min, 30min, 60min, 120min
Ok...now we have to only monitor 4 chart intervals.
* (I've now put on my pants
after putting on my underwear)
Lets pretend your like me for the past few months and your using your laptop only for trading and your too lazy to use your multi-monitor two desktop system.
The trading day hasn't started and while reviewing your charts individually in ZN, ZF and ZB along with their respected Yields (should take no more than 10mins)...I see one of your favorite patterns on the 60min chart.
Yet, because of a technique called
candlestick blending and de-blending...I can monitor the 15min, 30min and 120min chart via only watching the 60min chart interval.
However, lets pretend I know nothing about candlestick blending or de-blending.
I have
one particular chart of interest after seeing early hints of a possible swing trade signal in reveiwing my charts prior to the market opening.
I organize my charts.
Actually its the usual setup for swing trading treasurines and I just bring up that particular designated workspace template for swing trading and change the charts to ZN, ZF, ZB and their Yields (index) called TNX.X, TYX.X and FVX.X)
That's 6 charts that fit comfortably on my laptop screen
itself.
Lets pretend I'm not a newbie trader and do understand the relationship between ZN, ZF and ZB.
I can watch just ZN if its the key chart of interest and have minimized ZF and ZB.
Thus, on my monitor in view are just ZN, TNX.X, TYX.X and FVX.X
Wow...that's only 4 charts...all on the 60min chart interval.
Now...lets pretend I'm not a newbie trader and I set my ZN chart interval to 60min because I see an interesting pattern, set my TNX.X to 120min chart, set my TYX.X to 30min chart and set my FVX.X to 15min chart.
Wow...that's watching 4 different chart intervals on 4 different markets in front of my own two eyes without any extra clicking (chart adjustments) that will allow me to trade either ZF, ZN or ZB...
While just having ZN (key chart of interest) and the respected Yields in view on a laptop and prior to the trading day.
My point with the above...I think your having difficulty with this is because you haven't decided what type of trader your are nor what type of trading your going to be doing
prior to the trading day.
If you know you are a particular type of trader, what trading instrument your going to be trading, what type of trades your going to be looking for on a particular trading day prior to the market open...
I truly can't understand why you would have trouble deciding upon what type of chart interval your going to be using regardless if I gave you a list of 11 favorite chart intervals or a list of 100 favorite chart intervals.
Once again...put your underwear on first and then your pants and then your shoes prior to opening that first trade position to prevent being confuse about which particular chart intervals to use that's from among your favorites.
Then sit back...properly dressed and wait for a pattern signal to appear if one does appear.
Quote from dunitlongpole:
Hello.
I am new and I am starting to trade the forex market. I am already using a simple modified bollinger band system and am doing OK. I would like to add some candlestick analysis to my system. I was wondering, what timeframe produces the most reliable candlestick patterns? (I currently use 15 and 30 min charts)
Thanks in advance!
This thread has now run its course and no further explanation is needed.
Note: The above has been discussed before in other threads here at ET under the theme about how to make efficient use of your trader workspace (monitors).
I participated in one of those threads along with mentioning a few things about such in the Trading Hammers (revisited) thread.
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=52880
Mark
