How to Trade Forex with A Full Time Job?

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Many people view Forex trading as a viable passive income source, however the majority of them find it challenging to engage in currency trading while working 9 to 5. What if I told you that you could acquire valuable skills and learn a trade without quitting your day job? Both are possible without having to give up one for the other. To day trade while working a full-time job and turn a profit, all you need to do is establish some fundamental rules.

When you have other substantial time commitments, it can be difficult to find time for trading. The good news is that you can schedule your trading around a hectic lifestyle because the FX market is incredibly flexible. Whether you’re just starting out trading or want to learn more about how to make more time, here are some suggestions on how to make more time in your week for trading the forex market and how to trade forex while working a full-time job.

How to trade whilst working full time

1. Prepare your charts in advance

You can avoid wasting trading week time charting and analyzing if you set up your charts over the weekend. Simply wait for the price to move to your entry point before executing.

If you only want to trade part-time, you may easily fit all of your analysis around your employment. You complete all of your analyses at night if you work during the day. If you work nights, do the exact reverse.

Depending on what time of day is best for you, you can also conduct your research before or after work. Another choice is to develop potential trading plans after market close.

Now, always keep in mind the following when performing your analysis:

Decide on a time frame and stick to it.
When you’re in a good mood, conduct your analysis. You won’t be able to see properly if you’re feeling anxious or upset, like with most things.
Utilizing a certain trading method, analyze the charts.
You’re done for the day if you don’t notice your setup.

2. Trade during the best times for the forex market

This refers to trading during extremely liquid sessions, which are often the London and New York sessions. Because the majority of international banks have branches there, market liquidity is at its peak during the London session.

Spreads are lower at these periods and execution quicker, especially with ECN forex brokers, whilst you can benefit from strong market swings.

Trading at periods when your currency pair is most active is another tactic. Set aside time for trading, for instance, from 8:00 a.m. to around 11:00 a.m. EST or from 1:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. EST if you want to trade the EUR/USD pair.

The majority of this currency pair’s fluctuations take place during these times or shortly before the opening of the US stock market.

Learn when specific currency pairings will have the best price movement, and then plan your calendar appropriately.

3. Utilize a trading strategy in accordance with your schedule

Various approaches take into account various timeframes.

Use intra-day or swing trading tactics if you can only spare 30 to 60 minutes in between tasks so you won’t have to spend a significant portion of your day staring at the charts. But if you don’t mind doing this, forex scalping might be a better tactic for you. This is especially true if you enjoy trading quickly.

Day traders often trade for one to three hours, but you can do it too. However, if you use the appropriate techniques, it might not take that long.

4. Keep enhancing your trading abilities

If you want to keep up with the ever evolving Forex market, you must always strive to enhance your skills.

Start by keeping an eye on your performance each week and then analyze your findings. Learn what you can improve on. Then, acknowledge and absorb your trading blunders.

To better comprehend the market and the tactics you might employ, you should study as much as possible and put what you have learned into practice with a forex demo account.

5. Keep your discipline

In Forex, consistency and practice enable you to reach your full potential. This is how you learn proper trading techniques and hone your talents. Forex trading requires immense discipline.

What precisely does consistency mean in forex?

Following the same schedule, trading on a regular basis while working part-time.
Even when you close with a loss, continue trading utilizing the same setup and approach.
Having a system of rules and trading plan that you always abide by.

Being consistent will help you develop into a trader who is consistently profitable, which is without a doubt the goal of every Forex trader. Additionally, it will assist you in creating a routine that will be useful if you decide to leave your job and pursue trading full-time.

6. Keep a trading log

Regardless of whether you’ve started trading or are just starting to invest some time in learning the fundamentals of the market, keeping a record of your activities is unquestionably a smart idea.

This tip is useful for all traders, but those with little free time should pay particular attention. It can be particularly challenging for you to analyze how you’re performing and how to improve your performance if you can’t devote a lot of time into figuring it out after the fact without extensive documentation of the trades you are making and why you are doing them. The same is true for education: keep a record of the classes you attend, the terminology you need to check up the following session, and the topics you want to learn more about.

You may easily and swiftly make sense of your trading activities by maintaining precise notes on your transactions or education. This will put you in a lot better position to create plans for the upcoming week. You may quickly find out the specifics of each deal you made by keeping a trading journal, including the price you paid, the spread, and the rationale behind your trade. This data is crucial for analyzing your previous actions to determine what worked well (or wrong).

7. Make use of weekends

The retail foreign exchange market is closed on weekends for trading purposes. One of two interpretations is possible here:

Do your homework: You can use the weekend to plan your activities for the upcoming week by reviewing your trades or the market from the previous week, or you can use it to do things completely unrelated to trading to make time for trading during the week. Since the currency market is closed, you can use the weekend as a break to reflect on the week’s events and plan your course of action for the coming week. Keeping a trading log, as previously discussed, makes this even simpler. This free time is also perfect for studying more about the currency market and conducting research.

Organize your work week: Making the most of the weekend also means using it to organize some of your work week. If your job is flexible, working on the weekend can allow you to free up some time during the week. The additional time throughout the week might then be used for trading on the active market. If you have weekly tasks that really must be completed, set aside a portion of the weekend to complete them all at once, freeing up time during the week.

8. Track your time

Finding out where all of your time is going is the first step in figuring out how to make extra time. Auditing your time is the best method to achieve that. Keep a time journal of every activity you do for a full week. You can see where your time is going after an average week. Hopefully, you’ll be able to identify parts of your week when your time could be used more effectively.

If you do the same thing every day, for instance, you might be able to do a week’s worth of work at once or postpone some duties for the weekend so you have more time during the week. Some temporal periods may seem to have no meaningful significance at all.

9. Choose your trading hours

You might be able to determine an appropriate time of the week to block off for your trading once you have tracked your time for about a week. This will largely depend on your job duties and personal preferences. Some people love to trade in the late hours of the night since they are night owls. Others get up early. Others, though, have kids, and their best trading times can start after the young ones are in bed. Discovering a regular daily period that works with your schedule, obligations, and personal preferences is the notion behind identifying your ideal trading time.

10. Pick your forex pairs and strategies

Once you have determined a window of time during which you can trade, you should research the currency pairings and trading strategies that are active during that period. Since the forex market is international, the activity of currency pairings reflects the regions of the world where those currencies are most actively traded.

For instance, the afternoon in New York corresponds to the evening in the UK. This indicates that there is a lot of trading going on in currency pairs that include the USD. The best trading pair for UK evening traders is EUR/USD because it is the most frequently traded currency pair overall. Additionally, USD/CAD and EUR/CAD might be of interest. The Asia-Pacific session will be open for those who prefer later hours, and they will be able to trade the USD/JPY and other pairs that involve the Japanese Yen, Australian dollar, and New Zealand dollar.

11. Use risk management

This tip is relevant to all traders, but those who are not continually monitoring the market should pay particular attention to it. The truth is that anything can happen after you leave the market. By establishing a stop loss, you can be protected from severe losses even if the market moves against your transaction. Even if you intend to watch your monitor like a hawk, stop losses are the most basic form of risk management for all traders and should always be in place when you initiate a trade because distractions from life are inevitable.

Thinking of trading around your full time job?

Trading can become a part-time job on the side itself once you have developed a trading strategy that is producing consistent results. Trading almost becomes automatic once you have a reliable plan and habit. Therefore, there is no need to research the markets or keep an eye on price changes all day or night.

Additionally, you probably would want to avoid leaving your day job until you have developed the abilities and information necessary to succeed as a Forex trader. Consider your nine-to-five job as insurance that will give you a steady pay check as you pursue side hustles. I would never rely solely on forex trading as a main source of income as the market are very unpredictable even at the best of times.

You run the risk of making emotional trading errors if you give up before learning to trade. Because all you’ll be considering is making a profit in order to put food on the table. Consider automating your trades with copy trading to make trading simpler for you, even if you work a 9–5 job. You could even look into a forex robot that will do all of the heavy lifting for you so that you can trade forex with a full time job.

Conclusion: can you trade forex with a full time job?

The key to trading forex while working a full-time job is dedication, focus, and drive. Keep in mind why you wanted to start trading in the first place, and have the courage to pursue your goals. Think creatively and consider what you can accomplish in the available time. How will you find time to yourself? Can you postpone some of your other obligations or tasks until the weekend?

Even with a full-time work, it can be challenging to trade forex without making major time commitments. The open and close times of other trading categories, such as equities and commodities, are less flexible. For individuals searching for a market they can trade on that fits with their work or busy life, FX is the perfect option. Just keep in mind to occasionally switch off to keep your thinking sharp.

The Forex Geek

Self-confessed Forex Geek spending my days researching and testing everything forex related. I have many years of experience in the forex industry having reviewed thousands of forex robots, brokers, strategies, courses and more. I share my knowledge with you for free to help you learn more about the crazy world of forex trading! Read more about me.