hey what's going on traders thanks for checking out this video my name is Travis from master
the market and i get questions all of the time asking me what time frame i use for my trading
so i wanted to make this video to talk a little bit about what i believe to be the best time frame
for trading stocks now first and foremost what a time frame even is is going to be the amount of
time that every single candlestick on your chart is going to represent so this can be just a one
minute period of time meaning that every single minute a new candlestick opens and the previous
candlestick closes this can be a five minute period of time meaning that every candlestick
represents five minutes of price action it can be 15 minutes it can be an entire hour an entire day
or even an entire week and really that's all we're referring to when we talk about the time frame
of a chart and believe it or not the time frame that you use is going to kind of play a big role
in how you look at the chart so because of that you really should be using different time frames
for different styles of trading now in order to get into what i mean by this it is important to
kind of just know the very basics of candlesticks themselves so i wanted to just briefly cover what
these candlesticks represent and every single candlestick is going to have an open it's
going to have a high price it's going to have a low price and then it's going to have a close
and again this can be over a set period of time like just one minute or this can be
over an entire day or an entire week obviously also if this is a green candlestick that just
means that the close price is going to be higher than the open price and of course if it's red
that just means that it closed at a lower price than an open for that specific period of time
now just for some quick definitions also the colored rectangular section of the candlestick
is going to be known as the real body and the line sticking out from the top of the candlestick
which shows us the highest price that the stock went within that period of time is known as the
upper wick and the line sticking out from the bottom of the candlestick showing us the lowest
price that the stock went within that period of time is known as the lower wick okay so with
all of that being said as i've kind of already mentioned the type of trading that you're doing
should really go hand in hand with the time frame that you use and what i mean by that is shorter
term trading is generally going to mean that you're looking at shorter term time frames whereas
longer term trading like swing trading where you're holding positions for a couple of weeks
sometimes up to a couple of months that's going to require you to mostly focus on longer term
time frames like maybe the hourly chart the four hour chart or even the daily and weekly charts
and this is really the general rule of thumb when it comes to focusing on a specific time frame
because at the end of the day if you're looking for a longer term swing trade
that you're planning on holding for maybe a few months at a time it's really not going to be in
your best interest to focus on a really short term time frame such as the one minute chart because
that is just going to give you a very short-term look at what the price action may lead to
whereas something like the four-hour chart or the daily chart is going to allow you to kind of
look at the bigger picture which is really what you need to see for a longer term trade like a
swing trade so just to kind of give you a further example of what i mean by all of this we have two
diagrams here we have the one minute diagram here on the left side and then we have the five minute
diagram here on the right side and believe it or not these two sides are showing us the exact
same price action over the exact same period of time again because this is the one minute chart
every single one of these candlesticks is going to represent one minute of price action
and because there are five of them this is showing us a five minute period of time and over here
because this is the five minute chart this one single candlestick is showing us five minutes
just like these five candlesticks on the left so on the left in this one minute time frame
we can see that this is where the price opens for this period of time which when you compare it to
the right side this is also the exact same price that the five-minute candlestick is going to open
we can see it hits a low price down here same low price over here it hits a high price up here same
high price up here and then this five minute period of time closes right here where the last
candlestick ends which again is the same price that this candlestick on the five minute chart
is going to close at so at the end of the day depending on what type of trading that you're
doing it may be more beneficial for you to see all of these candlesticks within this five minute
period of time or it might end up just making things a little bit more complicated for you
and you may be better off just looking at the five-minute chart which is going to kind of
give you a cleaner and clearer view of the price action itself so if you're doing very
short-term trading and you're scalping you may be trying to take advantage of these very short-term
quick moves that happen in the market so it might be beneficial for you to see every single
individual one minute candle but again otherwise you might not need to see all of those and you
might be better off with the five minute chart or something even a little bit longer term like the
10 minute or 15 minute chart so as for my personal preferences when it comes to day trading stocks
i personally focus on the one minute chart the five minute chart and the daily chart now i know
that's not a simple answer you probably came here looking for one specific time frame that somebody
focuses on but the reality is is that looking at just one time frame is going to just be one piece
of the puzzle when it comes to day trading and you want to give yourself the best chances of success
which in my opinion happens when you look at multiple time frames
my personal favorites happen to be the one minute the five minute and the daily
and you may be wondering why i would look at the daily chart when i'm doing day trading
since day trading is a short term type of trading and the daily chart is a longer term time frame
so i wanted to show you this example here if we're looking just at the left side of the
screen here looking at the one minute chart from that perspective this looks to be a very strong
uptrending stock we can see that it's making both higher highs and higher lows the volume
is climbing and this might look like it's a good buy just based on the one minute time frame but if
you look at the bigger picture and you take a look at the daily chart on the right side of the screen
we can see that even though this is very strong intraday it does happen to be running into some
resistance on the daily chart now that's not to say that this can't continue to go higher
through this resistance line but at the end of the day it's never a good idea to buy directly below
a level of resistance so at this point in time you'd be better off waiting for this to have
some kind of pullback that you can dip buy into or wait for it to have a confirmed breakout over
this level of resistance before you actually buy into the stock and by just looking at a short term
time frame like the one minute or the five minute chart you're going to completely miss out on the
fact that there is a nearby level of resistance and a lot of times that can cause you to buy
into the top of a move before it starts to come back down okay so moral of the story is to mostly
focus on shorter term time frames for shorter term trading types like scalping or day trading
and longer term time frames for longer term trades like swing trading or even long-term investments
but still take a quick look at the longer term time frames like the daily chart or even the
weekly chart just to help yourself look at the bigger picture so you can see if there are any
nearby levels of resistance that you should be worried about for your day trade okay so hopefully
that helps you a little bit with figuring out what time frame to use for your trading
um if you enjoyed this video please make sure to give it a like and subscribe to the channel and
if you want to learn more about day trading swing trading and investing you can go ahead and join
the master the market team at the link that is down below in the description but anyway thank you
again for watching i hope you enjoyed this video and until next time good luck with your trading
you