Swing trading means that your trade can run for several days as long as your profit targets are not met and the trend does not reverse itself. Swing traders believe in the saying, Trend is your friend. Most of the day traders end up being swing traders. A swing trader may have started as a day trader. Either they scaled out of a portion of the position, set a stop loss objective and kept the trade running as the market kept moving in the desired direction.
A swing trader is also considered to be a mini position holder. Regardless of how a swing trader started, they need to focus on higher degree time frames and spend less time on 5-15 minutes time frames.
5-15 minutes charts will generate too many short term signals if you are a swing trader holding a position for a few days. The most reasonable time frames for a swing trader are the 60 minutes (hourly), 240 minutes (4 hourly) and the daily charts.
You should use pivot points in your trading. Using pivot points will give you an edge as a trader. Swing traders should give more attention to the daily, weekly and the monthly pivots as far as the pivot point trading is concerned. It helps them to be aware of the confluence of any support or resistance. This information will help them to identify potential entry or exit targets.
Keep this in mind that as a day trader, you are not so much concerned with long term macroeconomic conditions as you are with riding a momentum wave. The same is also true for a swing trader. As a swing trader you are simply looking to ride from a move and profit from it. This is your job.
Swing traders try to identify a potential trend and enter it at a time when most of the other traders have not yet identified it. You need to capture opportunities as they arise. In short term trading market conditions change! Forex markets are ideal for momentum trades. The forex market tends to trend well over the course of 3-10 days. This allows swing traders opportunity to capture larger price swings over a given period of time.
Forex markets are open 25/5 except on weekends. You have access to the forex market over the 24 hours period unlike the equity markets. This is the biggest advantage that forex markets have over stock markets. Therefore, you can monitor your positions, place stops and take action to exit a trade at any time, day or night.
Because of the time frame involving several days in swing trading, the nature of this style of trading is slightly more advantageous in forex due to the fact the forex market is a 24 hour market. Because of this continuous market action there are very few time that gaps occur.
So if a day trade moves sharply in your favor, carry it through the overnight session. However try not to hold a position over the weekend. If the trade starts making money in your favor from the let go, your entry was correct. Do not carry your losing position to the next session.
Never anticipate that a signal will happen. Wait until the close of the period to confirm the signal. When you enter a bona fide trading signal, never get fancy and try to get a better fill by placing limit orders. Go to the market before your competitors.
