Trading Part-Time

How to Successfully Trade Part-Time

Trading Part Time

I wrote an email called “A full-time traders schedule” and an email last week talking about the 8,8,8 rule.

And I had an interesting and valid reply:

“Mark I work all day, I don’t have time to do 8 hours of trading, how do others manage it?”

Great question…

So what do you do when you work and can’t trade full-time?

You need to adjust your strategy and method to suit.

Working With What You Have

Options include

  • Daytrade during a specific time of the day. The open, pre-open, or close
  • Swing trade and do your scanning when you have time leaving pending orders in the market
  • Trade with options – no stop needed
  • Trade a market that fits around your schedule, Nikkei, forex, etc.

Personally, I think the swing trading option is a good place to start.

You can scan markets at your leisure, and then place orders to get into trades.

The slower-moving nature of that approach means you aren’t worrying about positions all the time.

Dedicated Time to Day Trade

You carve out a specific chunk of time, have a selection of setups, and wait. This requires extreme patience and discipline. You can be excited to trade and then have to walk away because nothing is happening. Only to see the market move heavily when you are at work.

But it can be done.

Those of you who listen to the podcast know that I like to have conversations with developing traders. Traders who have turned a corner and things are finally clicking. The next one due to be uploaded is a trader who works in a high-pressure job, has a family, and still manages to have an equity curve like this.

He trades one market, one direction, trades 10-15 days per month, losing 2 or 3 at most…

If you trade part-time then this will be a MUST LISTEN. 

I digress. The point is you just have to find a method that fits around the time you have. Yes, it might be frustrating. Yes, you will miss loads of moves..

But there’s enough opportunity out there to pick one area to specialise in and become the absolute expert… Just find what can work around the time you have and build from there.