Some successful traders only trade during the first hour or so of the trading day. The reason is simple. They've found that 90% of their profit comes during that time period. Therefore, the extra effort to trade throughout the day isn't worth it and, even more important, drains energy and puts them at risk of not being sharp the next morning. No question, the best time to trade is the first hour or two. The moves tend to be large and the signals are often clear. However, the difficulty for many traders is that patterns often develop too quickly to instill confidence. One way to gain confidence is to simplify your analysis. You can do this by looking for variants of three patterns: a trend from the open (first bar or first few bars), a breakout pullback and a failed breakout.
