….tick…tock…tick…tock…

Follow the white rabbit… he never had much time and was always rushing off somewhere and was always late to be some place else.

One of the main things I have talked about in the Live Trading Room today is time management and how you can get the most out of your day without wasting a moment of your time between trades.

Even when you have several positions open for me the actual “trading time” is actually very small and most of the time before during and after a trade is spent waiting.

So what can you do in that free time other than update your analysis? Firstly I encourage you to give yourself a “homework project” for most newer traders this will be to strat writing a written trading plan of how you intend to trade.

Other homework ideas could be research and development of ideas or variations of ideas. I spend a lot of time looking at different variation of what I’m doing to see if they would be better on the real time accounts rather than on the back burners. It also helps me keep a benchmark of performance over the long term with my different strategy ideas.

Or you could do what I’ve done in the past and teach yourself how to juggle

So whats been keeping me busy today in what has been for me a rather dull slow paced day for my strategy?

As well as keeping track of many different idea’s, answering support emails,explaining each of my trades as they set up and all the other support stuff from doing the live room. I spend a few hours today looking at a new trade platform.

In addition to this I was looking at the same strategies I use on FX and seeing what they look like in real time on Gold, Oil, and European Index’s. As a few things set up I fired a few trade off on the demo account to get a feel for the platform and see how the patterns develop on these markets.

Ive looked at these market before and prior to starting the live room I was trading FX Mini Dow and occasionally NASDAQ stock.  Now Ive got the routine down in the live room I’m looking to re-start trading multiple markets again.

Below is a quick look at what the charts look like on the platform I’m looking at as well as the two trades I have taken using the Fib set up with exactly the same rules as I would use on FX.

Gold Fib set up selling rallies in down trend

Scale out not quite reached at time of this image. When/If triggered will be setting a target to low of day for last 3rd as will only be passively watching it.

15 min Fib oil set up, selling rallies in down trend.

Scale out hit just after this image was taken

Trade management for last 3rd as I’m only passively watching this Ive set a limit for a retest of the low of the day