One of the biggest mistakes made by many Forex traders is not understanding that deciding correctly what to trade, and in which direction, is 90% of the battle to turn a profit. Unfortunately, too many traders focus on trying to perfect entry methods, not realizing that if you correctly pick what is going to up today, for example, then the exact entry method you use is not going to make a major difference to your trading results. You can become an expert in picking entries on the 5-minute chart, but if you don’t pick what to trade using a broader, higher timeframe perspective, it will be of little use to you. Why do traders make this mistake, and how can they decide which currency pair or pairs to trade each day in a more intelligent way?

Why Traders Don’t Consider Pair Selection Carefully

Most traders are eager to start making lots of money. The way to make lots of money quickly, so they are told, is to trade using smaller timeframes – this is at least theoretically true. Traders notice that some currency pairs have lower spreads (such as EUR/USD) and think they should pick such low-spread pairs to trade to save costs. Another common reasoning is that it makes sense to trade those currencies which are most active during the trader’s preferred hours of operation. A further argument says that each currency pair has its own “personality” and you should get a lot of experience trading a few pairs so you can get to know their personalities well, and in this way, trade them more successfully.

These considerations are both rational and truthful, at least to some extent. The problem is, that they are very far from being the most important consideration that should influence which currency pairs you trade. I learned this myself the hard way some years ago when I decided that I would day trade, the EUR/USD and GBP/USD currency pairs full time. Over several months, these two pairs barely moved, while USD/JPY took off like a rocket and provided easy money to anyone trading it. Sure, I knew the personalities of EUR/USD and GBP/USD very well, had a great strategy which had worked extremely well on these pairs for years, and their hours of greatest activity fitted the time zone of my geographical location precisely. Despite all this, my linear thinking caused me to miss out on the only real trading opportunities of 2012, which came in the JPY pairs and crosses.