from the dawn of time men have wondered I don't know I was just thinking of like movie trailers we could do for this long-term versus short-term my name is Rob Buchert these are your FX trading 101 videos i love the heck out of you thanks for being here
when it comes to trading a discretionary trading account which means you're making the trading decisions you're pushing the buttons you're not making a robot do it you're making yourself do it people have these arguments about long term versus short term trading long term versus short term trading generally
means either you are trading often and day trading or you're not trading very often so I'm going to I'm going to write some terms out that define long term and short term trading so short term trading is generally referred to as or includes day trading long term trading
is not day trading and it's generally referred to as and I know this might be a new term for some position trading sometimes people will also throw around the throw around that doesn't make any sense throw around the term swing trading day trades lasts about ten minutes to
one day position trades can last days or weeks that's long term short term is a day or two maybe that's short term long term trading is generally referred to as using higher time frame charts an example of a higher time frame chart might be the weekly chart where
every candle equals one week and it takes weeks for a trade to set up and weeks or months for a trade to complete or a daily chart where each candle takes twenty-four hours to complete usually the candles will close at midnight London time and it might take days
or weeks for a trade to set up and it might take days or weeks for a trade to complete patient careful slow-moving a 4-hour chart might be a medium-term chart where it might take hours or days for a trade to set up and it may take hours or
days for a trade to complete or a one-hour chart yeah we had a bunch of trades we had a one-hour chart trade which would generally be referred to as the exact middle between short-term and long-term trading some long-term traders would refer to the one-hour chart as short-term but
don't get wrapped up in all those arguments a one-hour charts going to set up trades generally speaking that take an hour or a day to set up meaning you could get maybe a new trade every day or two and might take an hour or two or three or
four or a day or two or maybe even a week to complete once open everything below the one-hour chart the 30-minute chart the 15-minute chart the five-minute chart or the 1-minute chart are generally referred to as shorter term charts so if we go back over here short-term traders
these are like minute charts so I'm gonna refer to those as minute charts meaning one minute five minute 15 minute 30 minute charts we're on a 1-minute chart you might get 10 trades every day and you're just pushing the button or you might get 50 trades in a
day from the one-minute charts and it only takes minutes for the trade to set up and minutes for the trade to complete now of course you have to have a trading system and reasons to get in and get out but generally these are the main so far differences
between long term and short term trading most people believe that short term trading is more difficult Nate do you have any ideas why people might think that short term trading or believe that short term trading is more difficult you got to be there and know what you're doing
right when it happens it can be stressful you can take a lot of trades and be under a lot of stress you can have you could sit down in front of the charts for four days in a row and nothing happens or not enough happens and that can
be very stressful so I would call it difficult and/or stressful and then long-term trading is generally referred to I know this may not be true for everyone it's typically referred to as easy or easier and what's another way to describe it's it's sort of lazily moving along it's
it's relaxed that's the word I was looking for thank you mate relaxed approach to trading is that true not necessarily but I'm just giving you the lowdown on what people view as the truth one of the most famous books ever written about trading is trading for a living
by Alexander elder most people don't know this but Gandalf the wizard actually wrote the foreword for that book that's not actually true at all and in that book he talks about how it's it's basically only viable to trade long term and that's an argument that he made back
in the 90s and a lot of people have read that book the hundreds of thousands of people have read that book and and that sort of trope got put into the general consciousness of traders it may or may not actually be true but you're gonna hear it a
lot short-term trading has generally been viewed as more difficult and as more stressful and there aren't a lot of verifiably profitable day traders in fact I've maybe met in my lifetime and I'm only 27 which is not actually true um in my lifetime I've really only met one
or two people who are a day trader who trade every day short-term who are making a living it is incredibly in my experience incredibly difficult it's fun and it's a nice addition maybe one day a week to what you're doing but to do it every single day I've
met very few people that can survive that sort of stress long-term and trade for a living short-term trading it's stuff you're getting in and out of trades every day you're using the minute charts one minute five minute fifteen minute it's generally viewed as more difficult I don't actually
know if that's really true or if we've all just sort of believed it because that's what we've been told long term trading is generally positioned trading that's what the it's referred to as position trading or swing trading trades it lasts days or weeks or even months using higher
timeframe charts and it's generally viewed as an easier or more relaxed version of trading now there's one more thing I want to say about long term and short term trading but that most people do hear about one time or another sometimes people will combine these two things what
some people will do as a trader is they will look at the long term charts and then they will place trades on short term charts Alexander elder called this the triple screen approach where he used three timeframe charts to help him set up a trade frankly I don't
know if that's better or worse but let me show you what that might mean if we look at a weekly chart of say I don't know let's just look at the this is probably not a great idea to look at the weekly chart of that if we look
at a weekly chart of the British Pound Canadian and let's just scroll back because we can let's say you're looking at a weekly chart Nate and from left to right on that chart is it going up or down generally up so we might look at a longer-term chart
and say Oh on a weekly or a daily this is a one-hour chart but let's pretend it's a weekly we might say oh wow I'm on a long-term chart it's generally moving up okay so it's moving up generally speaking it's moving up and then we might go to
the 30-minute one hour 15-minute or something else we might go to those timeframe charts and say oh you know what we're going to do now that we're on the shorter timeframe charts what's which way is it moving it's moving down so we might say oh man the long-term
trend is up but the short-term trend is moving down and then we might set up a trade to buy it on this dip so that's that's one perspective that you might see thrown around that's not a trading system right there although it's the beginning pieces of a trading
system and you're gonna see a lot of that talked about as you see people talk about trading I'm not going to give you a strong opinion right now whether I think you should be a day trader or a long term trader but I'm gonna I'm going to give
you at least the following advice that I think will serve you really well I think you should make the decision for yourself whether long term or short term trading is right for you and let the money speak for itself don't do one of these two things because you
think it's interesting do one or these two things because it's making you money consistently and the best way to find that out is as you start your trading career and as you begin all of this process jump into the long term and the short term charts take a
look at both play around with them do some trading find out what works best for you where you feel the most comfortable and relaxed and then just do that I want to thank our sponsor Forest Park FX interested in FX trading ding contact Forest Park FX to open
up a trading account and get cashback rebates on every trade you place I don't know why I want to do that every trade you place go to Forest Park FX comm forex trading unfortunately carries a significant risk of loss terms and conditions will apply I'm Rob Booker I'll
see you soon
