The forex trading industry is known for 24-hour market access, flexible hours, and many other benefits, but many people avoid trading because they assume that they do not have enough time to dedicate to everything trading entails. Before you decide that your lifestyle simply won’t support a career as a forex trader, you should take a look at the three different types of professional traders we’ve outlined and the number of times each trade per day below. The answers just might surprise you!
Swing Traders
Swing traders typically place one or more trades each day and leave them open for a varying amount of time, from several hours to several days. This trading style is considered a short-term to medium-term investment and traders generally use technical analysis to find trading opportunities, sometimes in conjunction with fundamental analysis in order to analyze trends and other data about prices.
While the exact amount of weekly trades that are put in depends on market conditions, this trading style is considered to be a lower maintenance option as traders can enter positions and then do nothing for longer periods of time. Of course, you’ll still have to keep an eye on important data in order to make smart trading decisions, so you’ll want to invest some time each day or week to take technical and possibly fundamental factors into consideration.
High-Frequency Trading
As the name suggests, high-frequency traders enter quite a lot of trades per day, sometimes in the hundreds or thousands. It would be impossible for a human to do all of this manually, therefore, algorithms and computer systems are used, with quicker connections being required than those that are typically available to the average trader. This shouldn’t be confused with expert advisors, as these systems work differently. High-frequency trading is most commonly used by larger institutions, like hedge funds and banks.
Home-based traders that want to practice high-frequency trading without having access to extra technical connections typically place around 20 trades per day manually. This style focuses on making small profits off each trade, which adds up over time. This trading style is best suited for traders that have more time on their hands, as it requires a lot more effort than swing trading.
Investors
The pattern that investors follow involves holding onto the currency they are trading when it is in an uptrend for weeks or months at a time. In some cases, traders might even hang onto a currency for years! This is because currency pairs typically go through a cycle that lasts 2 to 3 years per trend and investors are looking to capitalize on those moves.
This trading style requires more patience from the trader, as it can take a long time to reach maximum profitability before you should sell. On the bright side, this is another strategy that doesn’t require constant effort, which means that traders can do it in their spare time or even while working a full-time job. Of course, you’ll want to keep an eye on your trades and pay attention to data that could affect the prices of currency pairs that you are currently holding.
The Bottom Line
No matter what trading strategy you choose, you’ll need to invest some time into looking at data, reading charts, staying up-to-date on the news, and pouring over other fundamental or technical data in order to make informed trading decisions. If you’re pressed for time, you can always follow a professional strategy like swing trading or investing that does not require a large number of trades to be entered each day. The fact that these traders often hold positions for days, weeks, or years also provides a great deal of flexibility. If you want to go another route, consider high-frequency trading, which involves entering a large number of trades each day in an attempt to make a small profit off each one. This is the most high-maintenance option on our list, but it does offer a good outlook of profitability.