switched from day trading to swing trading 6 months ago - documenting the transition
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used to trade intraday h1 setups, watching the screen most of the london session. switched to swing trading on the daily chart 6 months ago. wanted to document the transition in case it's useful for others considering the same move.
short version: the first two months were hard, months 3-6 much better. the edge is real but the psychological adjustment was bigger than i expected.
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what was the hardest psychological adjustment specifically? i'm considering a similar move but feel like i'd struggle watching positions go against me for days without being able to do anything.
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hardest part was learning to trust the setup without constant monitoring. intraday you're always near the screen and can see the position breathing. swing means the position goes against you by 30 pips during the day and you don't see it until evening. your brain treats that as a loss even though it's within normal fluctuation. the stops are wider which means the intraday swings look scary compared to where your actual invalidation is.
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the stop distance issue is the main adaptation. intraday traders often first size swing trades at the same dollar risk with the wider stop, which means smaller lot size and feels like you're barely in the trade. or they don't adjust sizing and the wider stop means much larger dollar risk than they're used to. need to recalibrate the entire sizing approach.
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total screen time is dramatically less, but the quality of analysis time needs to be higher. intraday you can half-pay-attention and act on obvious setups in real time. swing requires very clear analysis at end of day when you set your orders, because you won't be there to manage it. the preparation is more rigorous, there's just much less of it. probably 20-30 minutes of quality analysis per day vs 3-4 hours of mixed-quality screen time before.
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the other gain that's hard to quantify: being away from the screen removes a lot of impulsive decisions. intraday traders often make their best decisions at session open when fresh and their worst ones in the afternoon when fatigued. swing forces all decisions to be made when you're at your best rather than when the market happens to be moving.
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