What are the best time frames for swing trades? (2024)

Choosing the best time frames for swing trades depends on your trading style and goals. Generally, swing traders often look at daily and weekly charts to identify trends and patterns. Daily charts provide a closer look at short-term price movements, helping traders catch smaller market swings. Weekly charts, on the other hand, offer a broader perspective, aiding in capturing more significant trends. Balancing these time frames allows swing traders to find opportunities with a good risk-reward ratio. It's crucial to align your chosen time frames with your trading strategy and risk tolerance, as different time frames suit different traders and market conditions.

It really depends on how you define "best." One way to define it is to look at what is the easiest to develop algo strategies for. I have found daily bars, with trades lasting days or even weeks, to provide the best scenario. This combination of bar size and length in trade provide good opportunities for catching sustained trends. Plus, it leads to less trading, which then makes overall transaction costs (slippage, commissions) a smaller percentage of your overall performance.

Look into 'Markov chains' and the 'memorylessness' nature of swings. If you then wish to investigate more thoroughly, you can look at the market quality of 'addressable and accessible' liquidity that composed the prior swings that enables one to have the necessary (normalised) data set for comparing swing timing in a harmonic sense (Price, Time, Volume). This I have found to have immense value when calibrating algos.

The market cycle consists of four phases: accumulation, uptrend, distribution, and downtrend. Each phase has its own characteristics, opportunities, and challenges for swing traders. Distribution is a period of reversal and distribution, where the price moves sideways in a wider range, indicating that sellers are gradually taking control from buyers.

I do think weekly, daily and 4 hour charts are the best time frame for swing traders. 1 hr is for entry only. I normally look at the weekly chart then use the 1 hour chart for entry. I do the multiple timeframe analysis to get a low risk entry that will increase my risk reward ratio

Knowing how the market goes up and down is important for making good investment choices. The time frame, or how long you look at it, depends on what you want. If you want to buy and sell quickly, like in a few days or weeks, you might look at daily or weekly cycles. But if you're thinking more long-term, like holding onto your investments for a while, then monthly or yearly cycles make more sense. It's like using the right lens on a camera to see what you need for your plan.

Timeframe is the total duration of time it takes one candlestick to form. The timeframe ranges from 1 minute, 15m, 30m, H1, D1, W1, M1 to M3 and so on.What determines the timeframe to use is the type of trader on the chart. Short term traders would go for a shorter time frame. Analyse on H1 and execute on M15 or M5. And that model of analysis and entry is different from those that trade on higher time frame. Such as swingers and position traders.

In swing trading Time frame is key element to get good profits in the trade.Everyone have own custom strategies some will took trade on daily Time frame or some will take a trade on weekly time frame.personally i used a daily time frame and weekly time frame for swing trade if i hold it for 4-5 months

In my experience, given a swing trade corresponds with a short to medium-term investment outlook- and thus typically a more aggressive investment approach- determining expected stock volatility and volatility duration are important factors to consider for your execution strategy.Recognizing significant movement signals within smaller timeframes of the stock allows you to determine volatility impact and duration on future streets once compared to the broader outcome of the stock's movement.Understanding the correlational relationships between shorter trends and their broader outcomes enables you to determine overall expected stock trend, relative expectation for volatility, and ultimately the ideal execution time for your strategy.

I just completed coding fractals across timeframes. 15 years in the making. No parameters, no additional settings. It translates smoothly from one timeframe to the next. Classic indicators do not translate well across timeframes. Typically, the lower the timeframe, the noisier the market. Intraday trading is an extreme sport. When starting, pick more forgiving timeframes such as wekkly and then gradually work your way to lower, more chaotic timeframes

Swing trades are generally carried out to take advantage of the overnight/ weekend fluctuations in stock prices. If trader is squaring off position within same day or in next few hours, we may call it intraday trading. For estimating best timings of swing trade, trader should consider below mentioned points : - Risk reward ratio - expected price fluctuation - Any expected news/ event impacting share prices - Technical indicators - Board Announcements - Regulatory decision like budgets/ monetary policy decisionBy considering above factors trader can enter into swing trades. Example if any announcement expected in budget for real estate sector, then before announcement trader can purchase shares and post announcement he can sell.

Swing trading are mainly used for the taking profit of overnights or weekend fluctuations in technical analysis.Everyone have different strategies for swing trading personally i used daily and weekly time frame for making a swing trade and i used a Hourly Time frame for the entry in stock.

The best time frames for swing trades are the best time frames that suit your swing style. Some like to hang out with the market for 2 to 3 days, some would do 2 to 3 weeks while some are more patient because they have to, as their funds are so big to load/unload, would swing for 2 to 3 months. That is why some professional traders, no matter how successful they were at the institutional level may find it hard to switch from trading $50 - $100 million portfolio to trading $50k to $100k of their own money. The opposite is true as a prop trader ascends from managing relatively small portfolio to a bigger portfolio. At least in the beginning. So the best time frames for swing trades depends on your patience and tolerance level.

Transaction costs, slippage, sideways markets will erode net performance. Daily swing trades allow traders to diversify markets. Intraday demand more attention, i-e more specialisation. The duration of trades is a function of the markets. The lower the realised vol & directionality, the longer the trades and vice versa.

I would like to add something from my experience as traders lower the timeframe in swing trading accuracy reduces or number of winning trades reduces best for Indian equities is daily timeframe with 30-60 days holding period.

There are so many advantages of using the multiple times frames in technical analysis.1- Identify the trend in market2- Best possibility happens in next coming days3- To identify the best swing trade4- Identify the liquidity of market

Fractals have taught me that this is not a democracy. Not all fractals are the same. The fractals that trigger a higher level are few, far in between and more valuable. Example: fractals at level 3-4 on 5 mn bar correspond nicely to fractals level 2 on 1h bar etc. Classic multi timeframes looks like: direction Longer TF (weekly), set-up MT (daily), trigger (intraday trading)

Stars do not align to make you feel good about yourself. Moon is not in Sagittarius house, tough luck, get on with it. Entering the market is a choice, getting out is a necessity

The biggest disadvantage to using multiple timeframes is that it can easily impact your setup execution via mindset.If your mark a setup on the daily chart (as you would for a swing trade) but track it on the hourly or 15 minute, it's likely that you will psych yourself out and make adjustments that will have a negative impact on your execution.Two of the biggest pitfalls that people fall victim in these cases is overtrading, and adjusting their take profit.

The ONLY disadvantage to using multiple timeframe analysis is the fact that it will limit your opportunity set.This is not really a disadvantage though, as the quality of trades you're looking at will be much better.

To use MTFA effectively, it's important to have a clear understanding of the different timeframes and how they relate to each other. Generally, traders will use a combination of shorter-term timeframes (such as 5-minute, 15-minute, and 30-minute charts) and longer-term timeframes (such as hourly, 4-hour, and daily charts).When analyzing multiple timeframes, traders should focus on the higher timeframes first to identify the overall trend. For example, if you're trading on the 5-minute chart, you should first look at the hourly chart to determine if the overall trend is bullish or bearish. This can help you avoid taking trades against the overall trend, which can be risky. This is also known as “top-down” analysis.

Time is meaningless in my opinion. I have been in the trading industry for over 40 years with over 10 trading in the FX pits on the CME floor as an order filling broker, arbitrage trader and independent trader. I find that volume is the key to markets. When markets move it is the volume of trading that typically is driving the move so time may have something to do with the move but more likely something else does. You may find that using constant volume bars as apposed to time bars can allow you to participate in market moves more effectively. How often do you see a significant market move take place before the end of a time bar and your system signals at the end of the time bar? Constant volume bars can offer better trade opportunities.