This article is devoted to an issue that has always been topical for many traders: how to combine trading and employment? What does one need it for, and what can help one find time for trading if they are short of it?

Why would one combine trading and some other job?

Trading in financial markets and employment, such as office work, are, in fact, compatible. Not all traders in For example or other financial markets can just quit their jobs and focus on trading. First hand, this is true for beginners: one might need years to study all aspects of trading and start making a stable profit in the market.

Forex trading has never been simple, and only experts make money there consistently. To become a Forex pro, one needs to learn first, then practice hard, and then beat their emotions and stick to some discipline. All this requires time and finance. Not at all every beginner has a substantial capital that will let them stay unemployed, pay for their studies, and withstand initial losses for several years.

This is why combining employment and trading is so vital for many. Some stable income allows to pay one's bills and accumulate skills gradually. This said, combining job and trading is not easy because one's time that they can devote to trading is rather limited.

Below are several trading options that will help tolerate time shortage.

What allows combining employment and Forex trading?

I would single out several main ways of combining employment and trading. One's choice will depend, naturally, on their type of employment.

  • The trader works from home and has a constant Internet access, which allows checking charts several times a day;
  • The trader works part-time and can spend the rest of their free time on trading;
  • The trader only uses the mobile app at lunch.

Preparing a trading plan

A trading plan contain's the trader's ideas prepared beforehand. They plan promising trades based on their trading strategy. With a consistent plan, one does not need to monitor quotations constantly; they only need to wait for trading signals to appear in the area as specified in the plan.

I recommend analyzing the market and charts of your instrument before your day starts. Single out appealing trading ideas and create a trading plan. Then simply stick to it. You can open positions by pending orders or set up alerts that will notify you of the price reaching the values specified in the plan.

Setting up alerts

Alerts are good helpers to traders. An alert warns the trader of different market events. They are either sound alerts or text. This function helps the trader remain in course of market events even if they are busy doing some other job.

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Alerts are available in various popular trading terminals and mobile apps. Apart from standard alerts, traders may use different expert advisors and indicators that have their own embedded alerts, i.e. they also notify the trader of a trading signal appearing by the specified algorithm so that the trader could decide whether to open a position or not.

Trading at a session at hand

Forex works 24h on weekdays. Hence, depending on their local time, the trader can fully use one out of three trading sessions: Asian, European, or American. We exclude the Pacific one because it is a hard trading option due to small movements.

In the European and American sessions, almost any instrument will do, both positional trading and scalping. If you have the Asian session available, pay more attention to active currencies, such as the yen, the Australian dollar, the New Zealand dollar. Always study the peculiarities of the currencies and influencing factors.

Using larger timeframes

If the time you can use for trading is seriously limited, use larger timeframes. Large day charts allow making trades once in a couple of days; one does not need checking quotations in their working hours. Use D1 and H4, leaving week charts to long-term investors.

As long as signals on larger TFs are rare, the trader can make up for it by using a range of instruments. On large TFs it is enough to analyze charts once a day, find trading ideas, and plan trades. Positions can be opened by pending orders, always with risk control in the form of Stop Losses. The trader can transfer Stop Losses daily, protecting their profit.

Using expert advisors

Another popular option is expert advisors. An expert advisors is an automated algorithm based on the trader's strategy. If the trader succeeds in automatizing their strategy, they will get a perfect helper that will work for them, giving them free time.

For example, in Forex, a MetaTrader 4 platform is extremely popular. To write a bot for this platform, the trader will need the MQL4 programming language However, just writing a bot is not enough. Later in your free time, the trader should assess the statistics of its trading, optimize parameters, and customize it according to constantly changing market conditions.

Closing thoughts

Combining employment and trading is vital for many traders. Thanks to their stable income from the job, the trader can build up their trading skills gradually: one might need much more than a year to become a pro. Based on their employment conditions, the trader should choose such a way of trading that will facilitate market-playing in a lack of free time.

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