Overnight FOREX: how to handle it?

Discussion in 'Forex - Currencies Forums' started by WaveWage, Sep 6, 2015.

  1. WaveWage

    WaveWage Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Sep 2015
    Posts:
    243
    Likes Received:
    2
    There's one problem when you play short term FOREX, so short term that you are behind a screen on the whole day, it's that FOREX is also at night. Companies can ensure to make 24-hour round teams of investors, sure. But, you, as an human, you can't, yet, except if you are fighting the nature but then, I guess you may think about another more profitable job if it's the case :p


    Back to the humans, so, when you are doing short term trading, how do you handle the job? You sell all your FOREX stocks when you go sleeping? You put alerts? You rather put automatic sells/buys at some points defined so it can't go too much wrong over night? Or you just let it because one night is probably not enough to make that big problem to you?
     
  2. JoshPosh

    JoshPosh Guest

    Joined:
    Sep 2014
    Posts:
    393
    Likes Received:
    1
    There are several reason fro holding trades over night or even days and weeks. You must be a long term trend trader. You find the overall trend and you enter when it doesn't make an higher highs. Then you just ride it out til you reach your objective. Now where do I place my stops and take profits? There are several ways to figure that out. You can go for the recent daily highs and lows, or the weekly. It really depends on your comfort level and how much margin you are playing with. If I was just trading a standard us dollar ($1), then I would have no problem letting the trade ride out til the next day or week. As long as you have your stops and take profits in place I'm willing to sacrifice a 100 pip lost on a long tern trend trade.
     
  3. crimsonghost747

    crimsonghost747 Senior Investor

    Joined:
    Mar 2014
    Posts:
    1,722
    Likes Received:
    6
    For me the rules are simple. When day trading, close the position at the end of the day.
    Nice and simple, it might not always be profitable but I prefer to sleep calm and not worry about these things.

    My long term portfolio is for buy & hold forever, my medium term trades are buy & hold until selling at appropriate price after a couple of days/weeks/months. My day trades are just that, day trades, terminated on the same day. Always.
     
  4. WaveWage

    WaveWage Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Sep 2015
    Posts:
    243
    Likes Received:
    2
    Closing the position, it basically means you put buy/sell stops as explained above? Well buy stops doesn't give much security but rather more profits without you being there, meanwhile sell stops does give it some security, that's it.


    Or you rather mean that you sell everything at the end of the day and you will trade it once again tomorrow? But I understand your approach. When doing investments, one of the factors you MUST handle is the stress. As we take choices and risks everyday, and FOREX is one of the most risky markets, it is easy to get stressed every time and your approach seems to give a chance to be quiet.
     
  5. crimsonghost747

    crimsonghost747 Senior Investor

    Joined:
    Mar 2014
    Posts:
    1,722
    Likes Received:
    6
    I mean selling (or buying if you were short) the security so you only have cash when the market closes. Stops don't work too well since the markets are closed and you never know what levels they will be opening at.
     
  6. Andy

    Andy Member

    Joined:
    Jul 2015
    Posts:
    8
    Likes Received:
    1
    Use stop losses and take profit points. Be OK with the potential loss or don't take the trade. If you can't sleep at night with the open trade (been there), you probably are trading too big a position or are competitive to a point that may not be healthy.
     
  7. WaveWage

    WaveWage Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Sep 2015
    Posts:
    243
    Likes Received:
    2
    Market closes? But FOREX, outside of Sunday, does not close. It is like open night and day, even Saturday. That's basically even the point, since the market does not close but you sleep with your open trade (perhaps open day-trading?), the value of your share may evolve unfavorably because it is the daylight at some other place of the world and economy gone a little crazy, especially since you may use FOREX leverage because of the little FOREX value.


    That's a good point. However, when you are doing day trading, you are doing to do trades that are not designed to last long without any kind of attention, and I know some FOREX traders do day-trading.
     
  8. pwarbi

    pwarbi Senior Investor

    Joined:
    May 2015
    Posts:
    1,028
    Likes Received:
    5
    I'm also a fan of doing it the old fashioned way, and if your trading dutmring the day, pick a time that you will stop and stick to it. With the increase in technology these days you could trade 24 hours a day if you wanted to but that of course won't be healthy, and the more tired you are, the more prone you are to mistakes.
     
  9. WaveWage

    WaveWage Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Sep 2015
    Posts:
    243
    Likes Received:
    2
    Nice strategy about the philosophy and the stress: make it like any work, define hours of opening and closing if your "work" doesn't define one, and obviously stick to it. It should help organization and not to check every 15 min even if you are eating or outside but feeling stressed about the actions.
    The little problem is still what to do of the stocks at the end of the day? In your opinion, should we more count on sell stops/buy stops or, we just let it go, or rather we sell everything as the end of the day, so every day we start once again with a blank "account"?
     
  10. radex78

    radex78 Senior Investor

    Joined:
    Sep 2015
    Posts:
    226
    Likes Received:
    0
    Overnight trading, I think trader which work as swing trader or position trader they often open order more than a day, like as me sometime I have plan target for with using daily timeframe to look for target, and often let order opened overnight for few day, I am use hedging strategy to manage my risk, because I am use free swap account so although my order opened few days but not deducted of swap fee, which this is cost overnight that charged by broker and deducted from balance account.
     

Share This Page