When to Trade?
My preferred time to trade futures and ETF's range from 3:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Knowing when to trade is critical to your trading success. Regardless of the system being used, an entry for one trader may not be good for another.
Best times to trade futures
The market will be more active during the Globex and US Sessions. The Asia / Pacific session is the slowest moving and lowest volume time to trade.
Globex Session
From time to time one can expect this session to be quite active. The day prior, price action can provide some guidance as to what is expected in the next 6 to 12 hours.
Channel analysis is critical to understanding what price may do in the coming hours. The more you study charts, trends, support and resistance levels, the better you get at determining possible opportunities.
US Session
When the US market opens and its volume is added to the European session, price can move rather quickly (in both directions) As a day trader, you must be aware of your surroundings and be prepared to enter a trade.
Calendaring Activities
Each index or ETF traded will have its own characteristics and price action will be greatly affected by news events directly affecting the underlying.
For example Oil (/CL /WTI) has a series of events which will cause significant volatility including:
- API Report on Tuesday afternoon
- Weekly Inventory Report on Wednesday morning
- and the RIG Count report from Baker Hughes on Friday afternoon.
Personally, I use Google as my calendar for specific events I track. Also, Forex Factory provides a calendar of news events, global meetings, etc affecting all instruments.
Trade Timing
Price has the tendency to move quickly after market open during Globex and US Sessions. It is important to take action based on your price, channel analysis.
A trader may freeze waiting to see if price action confirms the expected move. Once price does confirm and moves as expected, it may be too late to enter the trade requiring a much larger stop loss to protect capital. Trusting your analysis is critical.
Why is Timing so Critical to Trading Success?
In trading, all is timing. Unless you are willing to have large stops, you must have a very good understanding of price action, channels, and support and resistance levels.
When you enter a futures trade on any instrument whether it is /CL Oil, /ES S&P 500 or /GC Gold, etc. timing is critical to entering, and protecting capital.
How can blackFLAG help with timing?
Once a subscription to blackFLAG Futures Trading becomes available (Fall of 2019), a trader will receive an email alert, and see a real time posting to our members blog as a trade setup occurs. This dramatically reduces the risk of a poor entry, minimizes the size of the initial stop loss order, and provides peace of mind when entering a position.
