Thursday Trader's Tip: Structuring Your Trading Sessions
Thursday Trader's Tip editions offer quick trading psychology advice that can be digested in 5 minutes.
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“How long should my trading sessions be?”
“What should I do when there are no setups for like 2 hours? Step back?”
Many traders feel confused about structuring their sessions and when to stay at the charts versus taking a break.
This is defined by three main factors:
The Strategy
The Market
The Trader
Let’s break each of these down.
The Strategy
“Should I be on the charts when there are no setups?”
I get this question a lot.
Regardless of your trading style, price is only relevant when trading in your areas of interest. Outside of these areas, there’s no business to do.
You don’t want to be a slave of the charts.
You might use supply & demand or support & resistance to outline your areas of interest. They mostly come from higher timeframes. Traders normally zoom in to shorter timeframes once price enters one of these, and there, yes, you want to allocate all your focus and readiness to find a trade.
Understand what exactly you’re looking for and then position strategically. You can take a break in these dead moments to recharge and use alerts to return and be at your best when it’s time.
The Market
Over time, you’ll see that some market environments aren’t worth your time. They don’t provide quality setups or the right risk-to-reward for your strategy.
The best setups happen under favorable conditions. For that, you need to know how your strategy performs in various types of conditions.
Rather than forcing trades, come to each session as a blank slate—read the market first, then decide on execution. Flexibility is key.
The Trader
This is often overlooked.
Many traders I talk with perform best in their first two trades, and then their focus dips. They recognize this and limit themselves to two trades a day.
You don’t need to be glued to the charts for five hours straight to be profitable. Your focus and mental capacity deplete in the session; it’s not something to fight or overcome; it’s a physiological condition.
Understand your drivers of best performance as well as your physiological needs and double down on those.
Final Words
With a deep understanding of your strategy, the ideal market conditions, and yourself, you can identify those overlapping moments when everything aligns and raise your odds for a peak-performing day, even if it’s a losing one.
The next live class will be on December 14th on the Key Differences Between 5- and 7-figure Traders. We’ll go from processes and routines to belief systems and lifestyles. Become a paid member and save your spot here.
Peaceful trading,
Sara
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Hey Sara, I start by looking at the market condition according to my stock scans - which stocks are moving up with momentum, which are moving down with momentum, which are consolidating, which have broken out of their previous trading ranges, etc. That tells me if today is a good day to trade anything at all. More often than not, I recall B. Pascal's quote that humans can avoid problems by simply sitting still in a quiet room.
I like to look at quantity of trade ideas and quality of execution. If a trade isn't better than my best available idea, I keep looking. If my best available idea isn't good enough, I don't make any trades. Of course, that's the plan and I don't always follow it like I should.