I rarely sleep….I never have. And these days as a full-time currency trader, its more than reasonable to assume – I never will.
It’s a problem I’ve been struggling with for as long as I can remember. No matter how minute, no matter how distant – any, and everything that makes even the tiniest of sounds (god forbid anything repetitive) has me hooked. Counting the intervals in between, doing long division, tapping my toes or clicking my teeth. I’ve got drum beats going behind the drip from the tap, symphonies playing with local birds, a quick estimation of speed from the passing kid on a skateboard – all the while wondering “what’s the story with that damn fan in the living room?”.
Needless to say I am almost always awake and able to give the computer a quick check, should the need arise.
For the rest of you though – there are some very specific times when it really does pay to get to work. I like to be at the computer and ready to go 2 hours before the U.S session begins – and would usually plan to stay tuned throughout the morning – until the London session ends. Roughly a 4 hour period between 6:30 and 10:30 my time. Then perhaps a look after lunch, and the usual “2 minutes til close”. Currency wise – not a lot of “intraday antics” line up with U.S equities in the afternoon so…if you catch the overlap of the two sessions in the morning – you’re in good shape.
You can then chase tumbleweeds for the entire mid to late afternoon and well into the evenings until around 9:00 pm when a bit of news gets released but even then – usually nothing earth shattering. In general the Asian session is flat , and currency pairs are often observed “frozen in time”. I’ve read that a lot of currency trading strategies are build and designed around the open of London but in my experience – have never really had much luck with that. If anything I would just look to get at it an hour earlier (5:30 a.m) and go from there.
Oh yes and of course – I’ve got to make time to work on this confounded blog and there’s that damn spaceship I’m building on the rooftop. Anyways hope it helps…