Short instructional talk by Adrian Reid advising traders to favour longer timeframes over short-term/day trading. Main claims: short-term trading increases stress and error frequency leading to rapid drawdowns, while longer-term trading allows smaller positions, broader diversification, fewer repeated mistakes, and lower stress.
Most people come to the markets thinking that they want to day trade or trade very short term. People start by looking at 5 minute bars or 30 minute bars because they're worried about the risk. They don't want to hold too long because they don't lose money. But by trading short term, it's often death by a thousand cuts. If you trade longer term, you can take smaller positions, diversify more broadly, have far less time, effort and stress to generate your trading results. And mistakes don't compound on themselves so quickly, particularly when you're learning. You want to make sure that you're not making a mistake over and over again 15 times a day. If you make a mistake once a day, you've got time to reflect on it and recover. If you make that same mistake 15 times a day, you're in a massive drawdown before lunch. So think longer term.
