Currency Pair - Short Time or for Longer Periods?

Is it more profitable to hold on to a currency pair for just a short time or for longer periods?
It depends, but holding currencies for a longer time can result in it changing more. Short-term trading is a difficult endeavor because time is needed in order to consistently make profits. Those who have experience in the Forex know that currencies move around a lot more within a week or within a span of several days than they do in just a few hours. With this increased level of movement, traders have more opportunities to turn their trades into profits.

This means that short-term traders who rely only on the changes happening within a single day are severely limiting themselves in the amount of profits they can earn. However, short-term traders often claim that their method is reasonable because they do not have to worry about news that can lead to a major change in the market and significant losses overnight.

That claim is incorrect since the risk of a currency drastically changing overnight when engaged in long-term trading can easily be avoided by setting stop loss points. With these stop loss points, traders can set a limit to how much money they are willing to lose which effectively gives them control over the risks involved. Because long-term traders can automatically close positions that are losing, it removes the supposed advantage short-term trading has.

An inherent trait of short-term traders that limits their success is that they tend to exit the market too early because they close off every profit immediately. While long-term traders can hold on to winning positions to reap even greater profits in the future or even use the time to turn losing positions around, short-term traders can only receive what they have at the current time .

Holding on to investments is the key to making significant profits in the market. To do this though, patience is needed to not act impulsively and harvest the winnings early without giving it time to grow. This trait is what makes a trader successful.