A lot of forex traders trade the markets several times a day or at least several times each week, but long term forex trading can be equally as profitable, if not more so. You only require one highly profitable long term position to match the hundreds of smaller positions you may take.

Short term forex trading can be highly stressful if done over a long period of time, as you’ve probably discovered if you have any experience of forex trading. You need quick fingers to trade in and out of positions and you need to make decisions quickly regarding entries and exits. You also are often faced with requotes from your broker and will often come under close scrutiny if you place a lot of short term trades with them that only last a few minutes.

Overall it is quite a stressful occupation which is why long term forex trading generally makes a lot more sense. Even if you only trade the 1 hour or 4 hour charts, you will find a noticeable difference in the amount of time you have to make trading decisions, not to mention the reliability of the technical indicators you use.

If you really want to take it one step further you can trade the very long term charts such as the daily, weekly and monthly charts. This style of trading is ideally suited to people who want to trade forex but maybe have a full-time job so don’t have the time to sit in front of a computer and monitor their positions all day.

All you need to do is wait for the right set-up to occur, enter your position and watch it unfold. Each position can last days, weeks or even months, but at least you only have to look in at the end of each day to monitor your position, and if your trading call is correct you can potentially make several thousand points profit.

As an example take a look at the monthly chart of the EUR/USD currency pair. If you used a simple EMA crossover system such as the EMA (5) crossing the EMA (20), you could have entered a long position on the last crossover (in 2006) at around 1.2500 and at the time of writing would be over 3000 points in profit.

You can look at other currency pairs and see similar results so it’s clear that long term forex trading can be equally as profitable as short term trading, if not more so. It’s also a lot less stressful and time-consuming. So if you’re struggling to make consistent profits from short term trading try increasing the time frame of the charts you are using, and you may well notice a big improvement in your results.