Day Trading the off-hours

Does anyone day-trade in the off-hours? I'm defining Off-hours being after the US markets close, so after 5pm each day when things quiet down a lot across the board. By day trading, I mean either trying to scalp for a couple pips at a time or just opening one trade for a while, but closing later that night, or anything in between. What strategies do you use and which pairs do you aim for?

No not really, your best trading times when market is most liquid (London and US)and trade the most liquid markets, you'll normally get chopped with little price movement, and for example less weighty stocks will be more gappy

Hi!

Unfortunately, day trading the FX market during off hours as you defined would be hard for most traders. You would need to be extremely good at picking tops and bottoms or have extremely tight spreads, both of which your average retail trader can't do or have. Considering the fact that most speculators aren't trading during these hours, it would be hard to find an edge or inefficiency to exploit. With the big speculators out of the market and more of just just random international corporation order flow remaining, your win ratio will definitely take a hit. Your stop loss would also have to include your transaction costs and that will also skew your risk/reward ratio negatively. Stop loss hunting is also easier for some of the bigger players to do during the off-hours and that could also potentially lead to unnecessary losses. There's just many bad aspects to day trading those hours for my liking.

Now you could take entries at key price areas backed by strong limit orders and hope price will bounce from there. Sometimes it does, but there are also many instances where price just hangs around there and eats up those limit orders until it breaks through.

I'm not going to say it's impossible to day trade during that time. I just think it would be more stressful compared to the more liquid NY morning session. Combining all of the above with the fact that price usually takes a long time to make any meaningful move, if it does, and combining that with the fact that we are in low-liquidity market environment in general; day trading during those hours isn't the "best" way to play the markets.

Now unfortunately, some people's schedules may conflict with more liquid sessions and maybe those hours are the only time they have available to trade. My best advice for them would be to swing trade rather than trading intraday. If they really want to go for it anyways, support/resistance trading may be your best bet. Fading any extreme price moves (fading the breakout with confirmation) could also be a good strategy. Just keep sentiment in consideration and where current price in regards to the overall picture. Your best pairs to trade would probably be the ones whose country has the most activity during that session IE AUD, NZD, JPY. I would personally look into crosses like AUD/JPY; just try to make sure the spreads are ~3 pips or less. Now while I have had successful trades during the time you mention, many took a while to reach the small targets I set for them. My best time was 2 minutes on non-news and I'll be the first to admit there was a lot of luck involved, but there were many more times I had to just sleep on it. Be prepared for the slow moves. I've also heard that for Asian session traders, 8-12PM EST is the best time to trade although I can't personally confirm this.

In any case, good luck!

it's always prime time somewhere

So True
http://forex.timezoneconverter.com/?...erica/Chicago;

AUD and JPY session overlap and can get some nice swings if there is news coming out. Opened one I think few days ago seen a good entry on AUD/USD I believe it was. I just trade what I normally do sometimes I may have a swing trade open for a few days but just market structure and recently added Patterns to my trading and they seem to work just fine during these sessions.

I just don't trade these times very often unless I notice a nice setup. I to try and get away from the computer buy 12PM (noon) central time but it should be possible Tokyo and Sydney do it

Same here. When I was trading during Asia it was almost always between the overlap. And key news is definitely one way of seeing high volatility. Even news from China can have a major impact on AUD. Just don't get caught on the wrong side.

It's definitely possible to trade during Asia, although sitting there for most days looking for big enough moves before you have to close-out for the night is peanuts compared to what you can do during the London or London/NY overlap sessions.

Thanks for the information...it makes me a little sad that the whole "come trade forex, we are open 24hrs/day" is just a marketing ploy. Just for my information, other than Forex, are there any other markets open 24 hours, or longer than the stock markets at least?

It's designed by market-makers pretending to be brokers, who particularly want to attract people keen on trading out-of-hours, knowing that they're among the biggest losers. The pseudobrokers are particularly keen on attracting the victims of "overtrading syndrome".

Many statements made in forex-related advertising are "just a marketing ploy".

The reality is that there's no real, liquid market after New York closes, until the start of the New Zealand and Asian sessions.



Not so - thankfully. Not normally anywhere with any real trading volumes that can move markets, anyway.

I only trade in the day, but almost 25% of my experts advisors have some tricks i use on them, like when it is after 16:00>23:00 trade using this type of indicator or this...

And, most are trading profitable....

Since I live in Australia, I searched long and hard for forex strategies that would work pre-London. However, the market is much, much thinner during these hours; even "Asian pairs" didn't provide the type of action I was looking for. Because I'm looking for strategies that use TA/PA for stops, this type of thin market doesn't work for me. Yes, sometimes there will be Asian news (RBA announcements, for instance) that will move the markets significantly, so there might be some potential there. But on the whole, I'd rather trade when the majority of the market does.

FWIW, I'm looking into longer term strategies now, so that I don't need to stare at the screens during the market hours. You can also use defined triggers for entry and exit (eg you get an alert when price breaches a level just below resistance, for instance, so that you're able to short the resistance or trade the breakout, depending on your strategy) and avoid "day trading" during market hours.