How to Trade Part Time and Keep Your Job
The wonderful thing about trading the Forex market over trading so many other markets is that traders can make good money and choose if they wish to trade only at the end of the day charts (the end of the New York session).
“This allows traders to have their normal day-to-day job, but still trade successfully part time in the Forex markets.”
There are a host of other benefits to trading the Forex markets. For example, a trader is only limited in how much money they can make for themselves by their ability and not a shift manager or boss.
This feeling of freedom and the ultimate sense of reward where you really are earning what you should and where you have the chance to create your own destiny is quite powerful for some people who go on with it.
But, for some people it can do quite the opposite.
Many people have jobs they love. Others, to be honest, may have jobs that they are not in love with, but they cannot just leave at the drop of the hat.
Does Any of This Sound Familiar?
- You have a day job, but still want to make high probability trades?
- You are unsure whether to trade either the really small time frames, or the much larger time frames?
- You have looked at a bunch of different systems and methods. You want a method and system that allows your freedom to have your job, but also analyse charts and make trades – whilst ensuring both don’t collide.
- Your major goal is to become a consistently profitable Forex trader!
A lot of our followers have a job that they are going to during the day so that they can then focus on their trading.
I know that a lot of you guys want to move from your jobs and trade full-time, however you don’t have to have your END state goal as trading full-time. This is not the only goal by any stretch.
You may want to make $1,000 extra per month from your trading like I teach you in this lesson here, so that you can put it towards your house mortgage payments or a killer family holiday or car etc,.
You can have your goal as becoming a consistently high profitable trader, but doing it with a job. This job would offer you real value and reward. For example, you would have work friends and colleagues to socialise with that unless you open a trading office and trade desk you would not have any hope of replicating these benefits and would miss out on when trading full-time.
These are major benefits to miss out on and would become more and more noticeable over time as you spend longer in the charts by yourself.
Not working with people who smell funny and are super annoying is so refreshing to begin with, but after a while you will need and miss the office politics rubbish that gets discussed. This normal everyday social bond and balance cannot be replaced or found in forums or Facebook. You need human contact.
Before continuing, I should probably make my position clear. I am all for going full-time and going to all your children’s school events and playing as much golf as you can squeeze in, as long as you realise what we have just gone through and you are not leaving behind a job you will later come to miss a regret leaving.
How to Trade Forex Part Time and Still Study or Work?
Just because someone has a job does not mean they are excluded and that they can’t make high probability price action trade setups that make them good profits.
In fact, I advise traders to start with only the daily charts, and to only trade the end of session in New York making sure they are using the New York close 5 day week charts.
➜ Not sure what New York close 5 day week price action charts are? And are unsure why they are so important for your price action trading. You can read why charts are crucial to your success at;
Using the Correct New York Close 5 Day Week Price Action Charts
I am personally a massive fan of trading the New York close setups. The reasons so many traders like trading the daily charts are:
➜ Lifestyle. This is a massive defining factor, with many traders coming to Forex to enhance their lives, not to have Forex running it.
This is a huge factor for traders trading the daily charts. Trading the daily charts takes anywhere from 5-20 minutes each day ONLY, depending on whether there is a set up to trade or not.
If there is a trade setup, then it can be a little bit longer, but if we compare this tiny amount of time to the hours trawling and staring at a screen that traders do on the much smaller time frames, the daily charts look real good from this point of view.
➜ Daily charts, with their obvious major support and resistance levels, are often a lot clearer and more easily interpreted than the smaller time frames.am all
The smaller time frames can be quite tricky, especially for newer traders who can find themselves making trades from weak or false support / resistance levels.
➜ Simplicity. Trading the markets on the daily charts offers a much simpler way to trade than sitting and watching computer screens all day long!
➜ People can keep their jobs and still trade.
If people are trading the daily timeframes they can place their trades and then hop off to work or come in from work and check the market – depending on which country and time zone they live.
Method to Madness – Daily to Intraday Time Frames
I advise all traders new to Price Action to first start learning to trade on the Daily time frame. Once they have started to become profitable with their trading method on the daily time frame, they can then begin to explore further possible trading opportunities on their intraday charts as well as more advanced triggers and trade setups with these time frames.
The reason I recommend progressing in this manner, rather than pick any time frame that the trader is feeling on the day is because the daily charts are going to give you a super solid base to which to work and build your whole trading method from.
If, and potentially when, you do move to the smaller time frames you are going to be using the same daily support and resistance levels to find and make trade setups that by then you will have become really experienced with.
Whilst it is true that price action is price action, it is not true that all charts and time frames are created equally, trading price action on a daily time frame is a completely different experience than that of a 15 minute chart.
Price is moving a lot slower, you have a lot longer to make up your mind, assess the trend, work out the major levels, put the whole price action story together and how you want to manage the trade before you pull the trigger on your trade setup. Whilst thinking about doing this, multiple 15 minute trade setups have come and gone.
Time frame and the time price action takes to build or create/form on a chart is SUPER important and is an often forgotten piece of the price action story.
For example; if price forms an inside bar on a 1 hour chart we can see that over that last 1 hour period traders have not been able to break either higher or lower. That is important. If we have an inside bar on the daily chart however, we see that over the last 24 hours price has not been able to break either higher or lower from the previous sessions highs or lows.
Can you see how we have two inside bars, but the daily inside bar has a lot more data built into it and a lot more information?
A major reason that first becoming profitable this way and not moving lower until you do become profitable is so great for your trading is because it is teaching you so many things along the way. You start to learn about what you are like as a trader, but most of all it teaches you discipline both in the taking of trades and when managing them.
If you don’t have discipline on the smaller intraday time frames, then the bigger sharks will come circling very quickly.
Many traders find that after trading the daily time frame and becoming consistently profitable they have no need to trade any of the lower time frames. They realise they can have the best of both worlds of having a busy and happy life and still being able to trade successfully.
Routine – Should we be Flexible?
When we are talking about trading the New York close daily chart, we are talking about looking to make trades when the daily candle closes at 5pm New York. When this candle closes – once a day depending on what time this is for you; we can check out our daily candles and hunt for high probability trade setups.
NOTE: If you are not familiar with our Price Action trade strategy, then check out our introduction into how we make High Probability Price Action Trade Setups. That lesson I linked to will give you a free ultimate guide PDF you can download for free.
I am super lucky in that I can get up in the morning and the New York close happens in my morning and then later during my night time I have all the major UK and US trading sessions I can attend to after my son is in bed. Read about my full daily trading routine at:
We have traders from all around the world and many different countries who love trading their price action and who get stuck and unsure what to do around their routine.
I quite often get an email from traders who know they should trade the daily charts, but they have a job that lines the daily close up in the middle of their job shift, or price closes in New York at 3 am for the particular country and time zone they live in.
I have had this email from a lot of South African members where the daily New York close is in the middle of the night for them and for the people that have jobs especially it becomes very hard to go to sleep, get up hunt for trades, go back to sleep and then get back up and go off to work.
In this scenario we use the next-best option which is instead of moving lower to all intraday time frames, we move lower to one set time frame and we master it, like we would the daily charts until we become profitable on it.
I normally recommend the 4 hour charts, however you can choose to use the 8 hour time frames, or the 12 hours or 6 hours charts, but I would not go lower than the 4 hour charts until proven profitable.
The goal is to master this time frame and just like on the daily charts; become profitable and once proven profitable, then look to open up our potential opportunities with further time frames and advanced setups.
Safe trading,
Johnathon
Leave a Reply