A TRADER`S DAY

0630

Good morning everyone! Today I thought you would like me to show you how a currency trader's day looks like. It's just 0630 and I've got out of the bed. The first thing that I do in the morning is a black tea for every trader needs something strong for a good kickstart in the morning but coffee is not my preferable choice.. Let's go now to my trading desk and look at the markets in order to find out what they were up to.

0645

Lets go! In my office I have a screen and two computers. The first thing that I want to know when I get up in the morning is to find out if I have any open positions and what they have been doing during the trading session. We have traditionally 3 major trading sessions every 24 hours. We have the Asian trading session, the European trading session and from there we have the U.S. trading session. My desk is clean and neat; I don't have much around and I set up my office like a professional. I have a screen, a computer and a laptop that I take outside, say, when I go to my office or somewhere else. Essentially, this is all the tools that I need. The first thing that I want to check is if there have been any orders in the market, what they have been doing the last 12 hours. Then what I do is that I  want to find out about what are the major events in the market. Most people think it is very complex to understand and that the average person will not get it. It is actually wrong. I personally use a couple of websites and I listen to a couple of persons and read about them everyday for 10 minutes in order to grasp what has driven the markets. Because, it is not only a set of charts of currency markets; it`s the fundamental news. So, what I do is I spend 5 to 10  minutes by going over to what`s been driving the U.S. market and then the European market. What I`ll do is to look at a couple of websites such as Bloomberg, CNBC and learn about what`s been going on. And then, I will have to prepare my daily trading plan regarding any trades setup. So, I`ll have to find out what will drive the market, what is the economic calendar for the day, what economic news is coming out and then I will reference my chart to see where the price is and to see what is coming up over the course of the next few hours. Before the trade, I essentially have to do about 30 minutes of work right now.  And once the work is done, I may have to come back to the computer for 4 to 6 hours for a couple of minutes and then in the evening for another couple of minutes if I see some setup in the charts that I look at. After looking at the setup of the currency, I will decide whether to trade today or not. So, once I have found out what`s been driving the markets and look at my chart for the setup, I simply put it into my notes in my diary, a diary that every trader should have one and tells me when I have to come back to my computer or anything important that I have to watch out for the day. And this as much as it goes for my preparation, basically. If I have a trade setup that is coming, what I actually do is to prepare to put the trade on, it takes a couple of minutes. So, once I have found out what has been driving the markets and once I have looked at the chart for the trade setups, the next thing I need to do is to prepare the order which will take me a few minutes. Then I place my orders and get on with the day.

0730

My work for the day is really done now. Because I like to trade daily on a hour basis and on a 4 hour chart means that I already know before going to bed last night what setups are probably coming and I know that we may have a setup at 1000 in the morning. So, I`ll write in the diary ``check the computer ant 1000`` and then get on with that day. So, what I am going to do is to find out what has been driving the markets financially during the overnight, spend 5-10 minutes in the setups, prepare and place the orders and get on with my day.

1000

Now, it`s just after 1000 and I have come back to check a particular position that I am waiting to confirm. Now, the European stock markets are opening and essentially they will trigger the European trading session. There`s some break in the morning and then different european markets start to move around. I've got all the market that I trade along the bottom of my trading platform. This is essentially my toolboxes hat I look at, how I trade, place the order etc. Some traders have multiple screens around them; it looks great and they have to look to everything. I prefer to be a sniper or a dog hunter, trying to exactly pick what I am going to trade. I have all the markets at the bottom, especially the U.S. which all the traders watch closely. And also, I follow the copper in order to see what`s going on in the commodity markets. And I also want to see what has happened in the biggest stock index in the world, the Dow Jones because stock market, commodities and currencies tend to move together. Currently I am watching the EUR/USD position and as the U.S. market is expected to open high, I expect sellers to come forward in this currency pair. For the time being, there nothing on the move and there are no important news to come. Let`s see later.

1700

It`s time for passing some international calls. I can tell you now. as a professional trader, if you want to make money, you need to have colleagues in the game in order to know where the big money is sitting. They will provide with the information about where the big money is going to trade. We need to know where the big money is going to position itself and these people will let you know. Today, they are shorting the Euro because they are expecting it to fall a bit. You cannot trade without the knowledge of this. Being a currency trader is sometimes very boring for there isn't much to do during the day for most of the time. Now I am waiting for the futures markets to open and I will start to see money coming to the market there. Today, it has been very quite but, you know, that`s trading. From time to time, I get busy days.

1900

We've got a growth number coming from the U.S. about in an hour and a half. The market is still trading and I going to look at the market if there's an opportunity to trade. The GBP/JPY chart is not showing a net opportunity yet and I am looking at the candlestick chart to look for that juicy opportunity on the downside which will tell me that the sellers are about to come on the market with some momentum. So, I might stay a bit around but I will not spend much time in front of the computer. I know what the market needs to give me and if I need to stay late in the evening just to check what's going on in the Asian markets, I will. If something happens, it will happen, if not, then it won't. At the end of the day, my approach to the trade will decide how well I will fare in this. When I trade during the day, the process may look to be simple but in fact it comes from the past experience. Consequently, I collect all available data in order to prepare the necessary trade order. I perform on average 2 to 3 trades a week and today is a typical day; sitting 30 minutes in front of the chart and trying to figure out where to place the orders by applying chart and indicator analysis. Then I determine the possible entry and exits points together with the stop/loss points. Once I have made up my mind, I place the order accordingly and forget the rest of the day until the close of the market.

Regarding the control of the emotions during the trading session, I generally have a tendency to say "Aha!' for a position that goes bad or good instead of jumping around in an endless tide ranging from pessimism to optimism. Generally, in a winning position, traders act as if they are like Bobby Fischer who trounced Garry Kasparov by 6-0; in a losing position, they feel like the captain of the Spanish Armada who lost half of his fleet while making a tour of the Isles without being able to shoot a single shot at the ducks and pigeons who were passing by. But sometimes, deep pessimism gets hold of me and I start to loose my nerve in a losing position; needless to say, I use up half of the dictionary of cursing available on the market... Consequently, a mechanical approach to this problem solves 80% of the issue but one has to get away with it; if not, forget about trading.