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NIAL FULLER Nial Fuller
Professional Trader, Author & Coach

Advantages of Trading Higher Time Frames in Forex

Most traders significantly over complicate their interactions with the market simply because they interact TOO MUCH with the market. Unless you have a really large trading account and just genuinely enjoy scalping the market by jumping in and out of positions multiple times per day, there really is no point in ever looking at a time frame under 1 hour. Keep in mind why you were attracted to trading in the first place; was it to sit in front of your computer for 4 hours at a time while you should be sleeping because you are too worried about what you trade is doing? Probably not, and if you do find yourself doing similar things you are probably risking too much money in addition to not effectively trading off higher time frames.

The power of higher time frames in forex lies in their ability to provide a “set and forget” style of trading. This allows you to have more time and also will almost invariably make your trading more accurate because you will not be meddling around with your trades. It is a well known fact that traders who enter multiple positions per day or “day traders” are less profitable on average than longer-term swing traders. The reason is because the more time you spend looking at your charts while you have a position open, the greater chance you have of making an emotional trading mistake. I bet you can think of more than a few occasions where you found yourself moving your stop loss further away or your profit target, or maybe manually closing out a trade that looks like it’s going against you only to then watch it take off in your favor without you on board.

Such mistakes are a result of being too involved with the market, you will not think more objectively about your trade after it is entered than before you entered it. Objective thinking is what separates the pros from the amateur traders, and the best way to practice being an objective trader is to walk away after you have entered your trading parameters. Many traders think they can out-smart the market or somehow control it by moving around their stops or targets, this is simply not true. You can never control the market; all you can do is try to ride its movement consistently. The market does not care about you or your life, it is going to do what it wants to do and you can either choose to control yourself by remaining objective, or the market will definitely control you.

So, this “set and forget” style of trading is one way that trading higher time frames drastically increases trading success. Another big advantage is that, generally speaking, the higher the time frame the more accurate the price action signal becomes, or any signal for that matter. The reason is because the lower in time frame you go the more muddied the market movement becomes due to natural market “noise” that is just an inherent aspect of daily price movement. Many traders get into trouble on lower time frames because they start watching this “noise” and they think they see a signal that is nothing more than “noise”. This can all be avoided by sticking to the 4 hour time frame and above. The 1 hour time frame can occasionally be useful for more experienced traders who want to refine their entries; however it is entirely possible to trade very successfully of only 4 hour and above time frames.

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Nial Fuller

About Nial Fuller

is a Professional Trader, Investor & Author who is considered ‘The Authority’ on Price Action Trading. His blog is read by over 200,000+ followers and he has taught 25,000+ students since 2008. In 2016, Nial won the Million Dollar Trader Competition. Checkout Nial's Professional Trading Course here.
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  1. Moses

    Thanks

    Reply