Only trading when candles close

Hi all,

I wondered how many people employ the strategy of only taking a position when a candle closes.

For example, if you are trading D1, H4, H1 - would you wait for the H1 candle to close before you took a position?

Yuri Rabassa, a very experienced Spanish trader, says that he only takes a position when the candle closes. And he gives a psychological reason: a lot of people is watching the same candle closing at that time, so a lot of those people may enter the market based on a similar reasoning moving the market in that direction.

This is not a definitive answer, but that's his point of view.

There's another reason to take positions only when the candle closes. If you automate your trading system some day, it is much easier to program and test a system that only takes the close price of the candle. Otherwise, you need to use tick-by-tick data, making the process much slower.

But, these aren't absolute rules. I don't recommend to use the close price for daily charts. Because at the end of the day the spread is wider and there's less liquidity in the market.

At the end of the day, like Aristotle said: "reality is the only truth". That means that you have to conclude if that end-of-candle principle works based only on the tests you make (the reality of the market), not on what people say around.

If I can help you with something else, just let me know.