My mother missed her step coming off the pavement and fell and broke her hip. She is doing remarkably well, and I look forward next week to getting back to my trading, I’m a couple of weeks behind.

Trading GBP/JPY on the 5-minute charts works well for me. I like the size of this market, and on many days GBP/JPY can be wholly defined. Anyone familiar with EUR/USD or even GBP/USD will find GBP/JPY quite lively.

Many that trade ‘major’ pairings will not consider the spread, a mistake I think. But, not a big one when they trade from 15-minute charts or higher. GBP/JPY however, on a lower time frame, teaches us the necessity to consider the spread. To do otherwise, and be consistently profitable, is more difficult.

To make the best of both possibilities I’m happy with my results of concurrently trading GBP/JPY on the 5 minutes chart (as the priority chart) with a watch on USD/CAD, Gold and EUR/USD – each of which are on the 15-minute chart. I tried many possibilities, but these choices give me an excellent opportunity, diversity, liquidity and a spread value that I prefer.

For example, GBP/JPY does not work with GBP/USD as both react almost in unison. Moreover, oil is often a mirror image of USD/CAD: so to trade one would have too much influence on the other. I do find that Gold and EUR/USD often have similar movements and on such days I consider a swap to AUD/USD or (and I’m in the early stages of this) the US 500 SPTRD.

Other FX pairings, and particularly exotics, are not considerations for me. Primarily due to spread but also we are dealing with randomness and probability, and we don’t need significant uncertainty too. As already mentioned, I’ve looked carefully at the US 500 SPTRD, and this is a possibility on the 15-minute chart with good liquidity once the US market has opened.

To trade the fund on the 4-hour charts is not possible (for me anyway) with already four intraday charts to manage. If my results are what I know they can be (and so far so good) over the next few weeks I will consider how to join the slow trader fund within this – more intensive – methodology.