How Long is your typical trade?

Your typical (or average) trade takes how long from entry to exit? For me it depends on the chart set ups and timeframe I'm geared towards. However, overall I would say 10 minutes would be most common. So what's yours?

I'm now studying the indicators and trying to develop 2 strategies for M15. The process so far is short-term trades would usually be closed within 30 minutes, while the long-term trades could up to 5-6 hours.

"00:14:22.350037", according to my DB.

how long is a piece of string there all different some are short some are long depends on the day

damien

Rather vague considering that Craig answered to within a millionth of a second.

Mine are intraday. Sometimes a few minutes will do, but usually (I mean preferably) closer to an hour.

anywhere from 1 day to 2 weeks.

Getting longer as I go.

Winners between 1-2 days
Losers between 1-4 hours

When I started it was a few minutes to an hour. Now days, its more like couple hrs to a couple days.
The last trade , that I'm still in, is getting into it's 9th day. (and yes, it's a winner)
Don't hold losing trades long anymore.
Getting there slowly.

I trade both long and short term. Sometimes entry/exit within an hour. Sometimes entry/exit for a few weeks.

~2m

average trade length is a function of an ea of mine, so just checked....

pending orders that went unfilled were not counted....

counted only a single live ibfx mini and only 2010 year closed trades.....

5814 total trades lasting an average of 17 hours each..... ignore the foolish games expanded EURUSDm,H1, thats the ea's name and chart it is running on.......h

My winning trades average 44 days, my losers average 12 days. Let your winners run . . . as they say!

The winners tend to average around 140 minutes. I find it almost impossible to overcome costs on anything less than 90 minutes.

The short answer is about 5 minutes.

I have tried getting my head around longer term but it doesnt seem to make sense to me, the retraces is just not enough compared to the moves in what ever direction. I could add to that and say that i think to hold a trade longer then exactly 20 minutes is mathematically unsound. Exactly 20 minutes after i take a trade, politics and the reptilian brain part of human behaviour is making a far to big impact on future calculations. Id say its very hard to have an accuracy of above .65 to gain loose x on any trade held longer then 20 minutes. Well you could hold a trade longer then that but you must then not care about say 250 pips gain or loss. To me it would seem like you are tapping into things that cannot be calculated (guessing) if you are at higher accuracy (.65+) then that at trades held longer then 20 minutes.

Now im not saying guessing doesnt work. There was actually very interesting article about Random matrix theory in Science this summer, think it was august maybe. There is a physicist trying to calculate where some particle was, think it was electrons, at a given time. Think this was in the 1970s or 1960s something, anyway he found that its better to try to guess where its at a given time then try to calculate it. I mean his accuracy was way better using guessing then calculations. That function was called random matrix theory, and it has been used in many fields, among others economics.

And well, recent developments in biology (Bruce lipton) and physics (David Bohm and quantum mechanics in general) seem to give much credit to ancient worldwievs that everything in this universe is connected/the same unit. From there its not very difficult to imagine why guessing might work: Because you know it/are it, question is if you will accept it.

This varies alot for me. All I can say is usually no less than an hour and no more than a week. Only trades I carry over the weekend are, you guessed it... carry trades!

The three trades I'm currently in now have lasted about 16 months so far.

Very nice. You can officially call yourself a carry trader. Isn't gaining interest while strengthening your position nice?! I have carry trades from way back also. You need to have short and long term plans.

When I scalp in the mornings my trades will last a couple minutes to half and hour.

Other trades that enter throughout the day will last 5 hours to 3 days.

I trade the FO/LO to about 6AM east coast time (US), shortest trades are 5-15 minutes and looking back over the last 3 months the longest trade I held was from the open of 'my' session to the close, on the dot each way, four hours exactly.