The Importance of Time Management for Traders

When people envision trading, they visualize flashing charts and fast decisions that yield quick profits. There is another aspect that gets less attention—time, the latent factor of every trader's journey. Proper time management is not merely about knowing where to be; it is about survival. Without proper time management trading can become harrowing, stressful, and nowhere near a productive experience. 

Trading Isn’t Your Full-Time Job 24/7

Certainly, the Forex market is open 24/7, but that does not mean that it is a marathon job for you. Professional traders are not glued to their screens all day. They identify the sessions that work with their strategy—London opening, New York overwatch, or quiet time in the Asian session—and trade in that window. 

For instance, someone trading breakouts might enjoy trading the London session which has upswings. Similarly, another person trying to hold on to a range trade may like the Asian session as it is quieter and easier to manage. The point is this; just because the "market never sleeps" does not mean you have to never sleep.

Screen Addiction Can Be Dangerous

Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes a beginner trader makes, is thinking that more trading hours means more opportunity. The truth is that sitting and staring at a chart usually results in boredom trades— trades you make to feel like you are actually doing something.

I've witnessed a trader wasting and watching the chart for eight hours, only to make a weak trade, in the last five minutes, simply because they were tired of watching nothing happen. Of course that trade ended in regret. Time management pushes back on this thinking. Time management gives definition to the trading window and helps you walk away from nothing on the charts meeting your plan.Preparation Saves Hours Later

Good time management doesn’t just apply to the times you’re trading; it also applies to what you do before and after trading. Professionals spend time preparing so they are efficient when they are trading. The professionals check the calendar for economic releases, they are marking important support and resistance levels, and they know what currency pairs are worth watching.

Think of preparation for trading like preparation for cooking. If you chopped everything you needed ahead of time then cooking the dish is more fluid, but if you are just chopping an onion while in the middle of frying, you get messy really quickly. Preparation works the same way in trading.

A simple example of the rhythm may be as follows

• Before session: Review important levels and set alerts.

• During session: Trade only the setups you planned.

• After session: Journal your trades and consider mistakes to eliminate

• Having a rhythm saves energy and builds consistency.

Protecting energy

Trading requires brain power. Staring at a chart for hours doesn’t simply waste time, it takes attention away from the moment that matters, "the trade."Setting limits allows you to protect energy for moments that matter.

Think of it as training for a sport. No athlete evaluates their skills from sun rise to sun down. Athletes train in "session" time frames, and then recover. If you don't practice this properly, you will get tired and make impulsive mistakes.

Balance off the chart

Yet another reason time management is so important to consider, is that life keeps going and doesn’t stop for you to trade.Many novice traders tend to let markets dominate every aspect of their day. They will check charts at dinner, lose sleep over the late local sessions and forgo social time.

Inevitably this imbalance will affect your trading and personal life. The best traders treat trading as if it were a professional job. They treat it the same way they would at work: they "clock in," stay focused, and then "clock out" later in the day. They can find the necessary balance to return the following day with a fresh mind.

Using tools to save time:

Fortunately, technology makes it easy to manage your time as you trade. Price alerts, stop orders and scheduled reviews can get you away from looking at the screen because they will notify you when you need to look at the screen. For example, when you are staring at EUR/USD bounce around at support for three hours, you can simply set an alert and take a break.

There are also great journaling software, simple spreadsheets that can save traders hours in the long-run when recording daily progress, while being nice and simple.

Here's a little snapshot of things that waste your time versus things that save time:

Time as a competitive advantage:

The reality is time is not just about 'looking organized', time is a competitive advantage.Entering your trading day knowing that you have organized your hours means you can reduce fatigue, control emotional trades, and make better decisions (which will set you apart from ten thousand others who burnt out because they lost all their sleep and social time).

Trading is already too hard for the majority of individuals, do not let it be the same for you by spending countless time away from the trading screen. 

Final Notes:

Trading is more than charts and strategies, trading is time, and the more you can develop the mastery of your best resource "time" the better structured you are for long term success by having boundaries and by being diligent.

The clock is a tool, to work against you, or that works for you, it is your choice.

To continue to build intelligent habits and continue to understand how professionals utilize and think about trading, visit the Learn section on Wikilix. Once learning is taken in the mind-set changes and the reality is you will trade with more clarity, more confidence, more consistently.