With the holiday season lingering on and a new year on the cusp of arrival, traders may glance at the calendar and notice there is not much economic news to anticipate on Friday to cap off a light week. In situations like these where there can be lulls in bullish and bearish momentum due to a lack of fundamental catalysts, it can be helpful to remember that abstaining from trading is often its own discipline. With this in mind, let’s consider three ways traders can be productive during bouts of time where financial markets may not yield many trade setups. After all, the art of not trading is hard to navigate, but is essential for remaining profitable.

1) Rest

This may seem obvious or cliché at face value; however, guaranteeing meaningful rest for yourself is of the utmost importance when it comes to excelling in any skill. Just as athletes and manual laborers need rest days so that their muscles can adequately repair, time off from purely mental activities like trading is crucial for avoiding burnout and preventing recklessness. Besides simply making an effort to spend time away from the trading environment, ensuring a certain quality of rest can be quite helpful as well. Whether that means indulging in some extra sleep, spending time with old friends, exercising at the gym, or making time for an often-neglected hobby, good rest takes many forms for everyone. Whatever that happens to be for you, fitting restfulness into your lifestyle truly is an aspect of healthy trading, not a departure from it.

2) Backtest

Because trading is a game of risk management and probabilities, setting aside time for pouring over historical data can be of great benefit when it comes to exploring a strategy. Whether you are considering implementing a brand-new approach or polishing a formula you judge to be tried-and-true, subjecting any strategy to backtesting is always time well spent. For those interested in learning more about how to backtest, feel free to watch this video and much more from A1 Trading’s YouTube channel, and explore a selection of Metatrader Trading Software offered here.

3) Read

It often appears to be the case that many retail traders fall into the trap of over-relying on technical analysis over fundamental analysis. While reading charts and utilizing technical indicators can be incredibly helpful, it is important to remember that currencies, equities, and commodities are real things with actual value, and that their worth is not reducible to patterns on a screen. Investing your time in conducting fundamental analysis, such as reading up on the economic performance of the host country of a currency you trade or keeping up with news about the geopolitical tensions influencing a commodity’s availability, can be illuminating. By making an effort to understand the nuances of a particular currency pair or other asset, you may find that your biases as a trader grow more nuanced as well. For those interested in using a market scanner that offers supplemental fundamental analysis, the EdgeFinder is fantastic.