How to Day Trade the Forex Market In 2 Hours or Less a Day

Learn to how to day trade the EURUSD in two hours or less per day. See the best times of day to trade, what time frame to us, and how to enter and exit trades. Learn how to manage risk and plan out each trade.
The following guide assumes a basic understanding of how the forex market operates. If you are new to forex, check out Introduction to trade Forex, which provides some background on trading currencies.To get more news about forex day trading, you can visit wikifx.com official website.

Most of my day trades in the forex market are based on these simple concepts. For simplicity, assume I am talking about an uptrend unless otherwise noted. The same concepts apply to downtrends.

Trading Beyond the Hard Right Edge
If you want to really learn how to day trade the forex market (or any market), master “trading beyond the hard right edge.” Most people look at what has already happened on their chart, come up with one trade idea and then pray it works out. Since we can’t see what happens next (beyond the hard right edge of our chart), inexperienced traders tend to think of scenarios they want to happen, or that they fear. Most people gravitate toward one or the other. They think about entering a trade and the price flying in their direction for an easy profit and high-fives from friends. This is fantasy. Or they enter a trade and imagine the price plummeting against them, stopping them out. This is fear. Either of these scenarios are possible, but so are a host of other possibilities, and which one is more prevalent in your mind will bias your trading.

We don’t want to be biased by one extreme view. Rather, we want to consider all possibilities: the price could drop, rally, or do nothing.

If you are very optimistic, you may miss clues that the market is turning against you. If you are very pessimistic you may avoid a good trade, or jump out of it too early. What is missing? Your strategy gets you into a trade, with an initial profit target and stop loss. Once you are in the trade though, it is a different world. All sorts of things could happen. What if the price moves in your favor slightly and then starts to move against you? What if the price moves to within 0.1 pips of your target and then reverses? What if the price does absolutely nothing after you get in…for 10 minutes? You were expecting something to happen, and now that it hasn’t what do you do?

As a day trader you need to consider the various things could happen, and what you will do in each circumstance. This may seem impossible, but it’s not. Actually, there are only a few things that could happen. The price can rise, fall, or move sideways, and it may do it quickly or slowly. The combination of the price moving higher-quickly tells us something different than higher-slowly. A quick downward movement followed by a slow upward movement tells us something different than slow-down and quick-up.

Have a plan for each combination that could arise. It is a fair bit to think about…but you have a lot of time while trading. Placing an order takes almost no time or effort. Hitting buttons is easy. The real effort is the thinking and analysis that occurs before the trade. Once the trade is placed, you should already know what you will do in any situation. Develop your thinking and analysis skills so you can do this on the fly.
How to Day Trade the Forex Market – Active Trade Management
Trading beyond the hard right edge is an advanced form of active trade management. It is a mind frame, where you look at what has happened and come up with scenarios for exactly what you will do (exit, adjust stop loss or target, or change nothing) in various scenarios after you enter a trade. As discussed above, there are only a few things need to consider–direction, size of moves, and speed of moves.
To day trade the forex market successfully you need to read and adjust to market conditions. You decide which direction you are going to trade, and before the trade you decide how to manage that trade. Where you entered is no longer relevant; you can’t do anything about your entry price once in a trade. You adapt to what happens after you are in the trade. Like Napoleon on the battlefield, you have calculated everything beforehand.

In less than two hours of trading we had 5 trades: 3 winners and 2 losers, for a total of 36.6 pips. Assume you have a $2000 account and risk 1% (can lose up to $20 on each trade). With a 10 pip stop loss you can trade 2 mini lots to stay within this risk tolerance. Therefore, your daily profit is 36.6 pips x $1 (how much a mini lot is worth per pip) x 2 (how many mini lots you are trading) = $73.2, or 3.66%. With a $10,000 account, you make $366 for two hours work. Once consistent, you can increase risk to 1.5% or 2% per trade (no need to go higher than that), pushing your revenue to $732 on a $10,000 account. That’s based on one strategy…the forex strategies guide has many more.

Here is the April 15 EURUSD 1-minute chart (I learned a new trick in MT4–if you drag an order from your account history onto the chart it will put the trade levels for that trade on your chart).