Timeframes for Trading Forex Sailing
Forex Sailing is a trading method that allows you to participate in online forex trading with only 15-30 minutes of effort per day.
Forex Sailing wraps up the important components of technical and fundamental analysis, but allows you to save time by only focusing on the important trades.
For the next few posts, I’m going to describe the Forex Sailing process. After these few warm-up posts I’ll give you the entire Forex Sailing online forex trading seminar.
Key Trading Timeframe
With Forex Sailing, we’ll be trading the 4-hour candlestick charts. Here’s why this is a great timeframe to trade:
- A candle takes 4 hours to form
- Price swings take a few days to complete
- Checking charts once a day is usually enough (twice if you want to)
- Looking to capture 100-300 pips per move
- Makes the spread almost negligible
Forex Sailing is specifically designed for 4-hour charts. Once you get good, you could change to hourly charts. I recommend you stay with 4 hour charts as you’ll be pleased with them. I’ll be teaching shorter term forex trading techniques when I cover Forex Surfing in a few weeks.
Riding Big Waves
Before we sail the forex on 4-hour charts, we first need to look at daily charts to see the direction of the trend. The only thing you care about it the trend’s overall direction. When you discover the trend direction on the daily charts (up, down or sideways) you will need to write it down.
To determine the direction of the trend, simple trendline breaks, support & resistance and basic technical indicators is all you need to use.
Forex Sailing Rule #1: NEVER go against the daily trend, ONLY go in the direction of the daily trend.
The daily trend is more powerful than the 4-hour trend. You NEVER want to go against it. Of course you’ll miss trading the retracements, but you’ll also avoid a higher percentage of “bad trades.”
Scanning for Forex Sailing Trading Opportunities
Since you can NEVER trade against the trend, your first step is to look at the daily charts and see what the trend direction is. For each of the 6 major currency pairs, you’ll want to WRITE DOWN the direction of the trend.
Here are the 6 major currency pairs:
- EUR/USD
- GBP/USD
- USD/JPY
- AUD/USD
- USD/CHF
- USD/CAD
Note: you can use Forex Sailing for ANY currency pair. For simplicity, I will only refer to these 6 currency pairs in the Forex Sailing course.
Within about 3-5 minutes you should be able to spot the direction of the trend for these 6 MAJOR currency pairs. In a trading journal (a cheap notebook), write the following down:
Date: Friday April 16th, 2010
- EUR/USD – daily chart uptrend
- GBP/USD – daily chart uptrend
- USD/JPY – daily chart uptrend
- AUD/USD – daily chart uptrend
- USD/CHF – daily chart consolidation
- USD/CAD – daily chart downtrend
Daily Trend Quick Decision for 3 of the 6 MAJOR currency pairs for online forex trading (click image to enlarge)
Now that you’ve written down the trend directions, you can start looking at the 4-hour charts for trades. The reason for this is when you see a forex trading opportunity in the 4-hour charts, you will ONLY go in the direction of the daily trend.
This means that you will only enter trades going long for the EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY, AUD/USD. You will only enter short trades for USD/CAD. Since USD/CHF isn’t trending, we will skip trading it.
This filters out a lot of trades and allows you to focus on a few trading opportunities at a time. On some days there won’t be any trades to do. On other days there could be several trades.
Avoid Overtrading
The goal of a Forex Sailor is not to “always be trading forex.” There could be several days (even 1-2 weeks) when you aren’t trading forex online at all!
This is ok!
Forex Sailing only looks at the sweet Forex trading opportunities and leaves the “so-so” trades for the Forex Losers.
Forex Sailing Daily Trend Analysis
At the beginning of each market week (starting April 18th), I’ll provide a summary of the daily trend direction with forex chart shots of the 6 MAJOR currency pairs listed above. The weekly report will also cover the news outlook for the MAJOR currency pairs. If anything important happens during the week, I’ll post it on the blog (it should be generally good for most of the week).
If you’re subscribed to rapid forex’s free forex trading eCourse, you’ll automatically receive the Forex Sailing weekly market snapshot.
Related posts:
- Forex Sailing Trading Analysis for April 25-30
- Forex Sailing Trading Analysis for April 18-23
- Fundamental News for Forex Sailing
- Online Forex Trading Example – Forex Sailing GBP/CHF
- Forex Sailing – RULES for Online Forex Trading
Tags: 4 hour candlesticks, daily chart trends, forex sailing, major currency pairs, online forex trading Posted in
Rapid Forex on 
Philile on 
Gary Cooper on
April 16th, 2010 at 2:56 pm
Are their “free” forex charts to look at the forex pairs daily, without having an online broker account?
[Reply]
Rapid Forex
Reply:
April 16th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
I recommend getting a free demo account (every broker offers one) because the charts are better. If you don’t want a demo account, you can go here and access forex charts for free in your web browser.
[Reply]
April 16th, 2010 at 3:18 pm
Thanks for giving specific timeframes to trade with. I’m looking forward to seeing how you get into and out of trades.
I’m waiting anxiously & patiently.
[Reply]
April 16th, 2010 at 3:18 pm
Brian,
This looks good so far. How long have you been trading this way and what size account/how many lots per trade does it take per trade to make enough to qualify as a full time career?
Thanks
Charles
[Reply]
Rapid Forex
Reply:
April 16th, 2010 at 3:23 pm
@Charles – I used to do more Forex Surfing (10 minute charts), but as I got older I’ve gravitated towards (Forex Sailing) 4-hour charts . The methods are similar, but the pace is different. As far as lots traded, that depends on the leverage you’re using, your broker account and the income you need to live the life you desire. I’ll be covering this in a blog post that I’ll be doing soon. It’s an explanation that I want to give a full answer for while allowing you to set your own goals for you life and your definition of financial freedom.
[Reply]
April 16th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
I use larger time frames to trade with the trend too. I’m glad you are using this for your Forex Sailing method, if you didn’t I would have suggested that you add it
Have fun in Maui – I’m with you in spirit.
Howdy from West Virginia,
Tom
[Reply]
April 16th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
Brian
Is this your first blog on Forex Sailing? I am asking this to make sure I haven’t missed anything. I try to follow all our blogs. They are very interesting and full of wisdom.
Thanks
Syed
[Reply]
Rapid Forex
Reply:
April 16th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
@Syed – yes, this is my first post on Forex Sailing. if you’re subscribed to the 20 part FREE eCourse, you’ll receive all of the important forex trading lessons on this blog.
[Reply]
April 16th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
Interesting and it sounds good Brian. Cheers!
[Reply]
April 16th, 2010 at 9:02 pm
Brian,
I have problems to know if market is tranding or consolidating. Are you looking if trendline is broken and then candles penetrates back again. For example how do you know that EURUSD is trending up when it didn’t go up to last high 1.3824 – I can see that double bottom is forming, but is that enough? How so you know that this is not start of new consolidation? Can you explain us how do you determine that. Thank you for your excellent work, I’m so happy that you share your knowladge with us!
Maks
[Reply]
Rapid Forex
Reply:
April 17th, 2010 at 9:04 am
@Maks – After Monday & Tuesday’s blog posts you should have a clear way to determine this. It’ll be really easy & you won’t have to guess
[Reply]
April 17th, 2010 at 12:55 am
Thanks for teaching on time frame,this is great..hope to learn about entry and exit.
[Reply]
April 17th, 2010 at 3:55 am
Dear Brian,
I have still troubles to know if there is day trend or consolidation.
For example, how do you know that EURUSD is not in consolidation. It has broke daily trendline and is forming double bottom – but it hasn’t pass last level of resistance 1.3816 i am never sure about it. Can you give us some more explanation about it. Thank u, have a nice day..
Maks
[Reply]
Rapid Forex
Reply:
April 17th, 2010 at 3:59 am
@Maks – watch for my market analysis weekly summary that will be on the blog tomorrow. It should help with this for you.
[Reply]
April 17th, 2010 at 4:34 am
hi Brian, great sharing and simple explanation to the point. It helps newbies and those still not making it in forex. I look forward to yr next lesson on trades entry based on H4 analysis. Tks.
[Reply]
April 17th, 2010 at 4:36 am
BTW, pls also include some really good advice/guidelines to being a more discipline trader. Guess most people who have learn how to trade forex still find it hard to establish a consistent, progressive result, me included.
[Reply]
April 17th, 2010 at 7:06 am
Thanks Brian for time frame info, looking forward to the meat, like everybody else, all the best Ludd.
[Reply]
April 17th, 2010 at 7:25 am
Tres interessant !!
Very interesting !! I can’t wait for the next posts to go further with the “forex sailing” (although I have the book (2005 version) it’s another thing to follow live trading.)
Have fun in Maoui
Ariel BC
[Reply]
Rapid Forex
Reply:
April 17th, 2010 at 7:27 am
@Ariel – Forex Sailing that I’m teaching now is totally different than the 2005 book. It’s much more refined now & easier to follow. In a few days I’ll show you how it works with some videos for the webinar.
[Reply]
April 17th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
Thanks for the free chart link, however I’m not able to see any charts. It says wait for charts to load, but nothing comes up. Please advise.
[Reply]
Rapid Forex
Reply:
April 17th, 2010 at 2:12 pm
@Tim – why don’t you just get a demo account from FXCM?
[Reply]
April 17th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
where is the best web site to view forex charts?
[Reply]
April 17th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
Thanks Brian, I opened the demo account at fxcm tonight.
[Reply]
Rapid Forex
Reply:
April 17th, 2010 at 6:01 pm
@Tim – great! that’ll help you out a lot.
[Reply]
April 18th, 2010 at 3:51 am
Hi Brian,
Can you recommend any trend indicator for mt4 for monitoring MTF? I will earch for a few and post or write back…
JW
[Reply]
April 18th, 2010 at 9:28 am
Why are there so many Forex trading ads on your site when you’ve already discussed the issue with costly route of trying to find the “Golden Grail” of trading the forex and just sticking with simple rules? Is there a message that we should be trying these advertised methods? And what is your take on each of these ads?
[Reply]
April 19th, 2010 at 5:12 pm
Hi Brian
As a new beginner, to trade 4 hour timeframe, what is a reasonable capital to start with regarding money management issue.
Would be nice if you could share with us your trading methodolgy in summary. For example
1. You open daily chart first, then 4 hr chart
2. price above or below the trendline, or moving average such as 21 EMA, etc
3. confirm by MACD, stochastic, etc
4. Then take long or short trades or wait.
5. etc
[Reply]
Rapid Forex
Reply:
April 19th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
@Kulvadee – thank you for this comment. I will be sharing these exact things with you over the next few posts. I’m saving these for full posts, so please hang in for a few more days and you’ll have the answers to this.
[Reply]
April 24th, 2010 at 3:04 am
I have my pen and papers next to me. Let’s sail!
[Reply]
May 4th, 2010 at 7:03 am
To Tony:
The reason there are so many ads, they are paid ads or PAY PER CLICK ads, I imagine. I believe this is how Brian keeps his info FREE! Please feel free to correct me Brian or anyone!
[Reply]