Contrary to popular belief, and to put it bluntly, small time frames are in general a waste of a retail trader's time. Allow me to explain, if I may.

As new traders, most normally have some kind of dream of being able to click a few buttons, and in a few short minutes, to be able to make a royal fortune. I know I had this dream, and have had several others tell me the same thing. Of course, a few trades into things and most soon realize that there is actually a lot more to this than may initially meet the eye.

The new generation of Global Market Traders (GMT), those who may not be new to trading but are new to trading a global market that is now extremely inter-connected from region to region and asset to asset, also soon realize that a structured thought process really is essential to cap expectancy and to control risk.

The most structured thought that GMT's can have is how to structure trading costs, and by default, how to control and leverage time. There are several kinds of expenses in our trading business, including the expense of our computer and its maintenance, the spread and swap paid out on currencies, and the cost of an office or home. Certainly one can quantify these fairly easily. There's a price for each, and it can be kept track of.

There are also several other possible expenses as well, in some extreme cases, including the cost of relationships because of trading habits and poor time management. One of the most expensive costs ironically enough has no fixed value. It's time, and even though there is no price tag, lost time can never be replaced, and that makes it pretty expensive in my book.

When I first started trading, I was mainly a 15 minute chart trader. I would sit at the computer all day, normally averaging 6 to 8 hours in any given session. The funny thing is that after as many as 20 trades, I might only be up $30. It was frustrating to say the least, and even worse when you do the hourly rate.

I am not saying there are not successful scalpers out there, just that it's inefficient in general to those who have not paid the price of time to get a structured way of trading a low time-frame chart.

When you are sitting at the computer sweating it out, and making $6 to $7 dollars an hour, you are using time at a very inefficient rate, and speaking of efficiency, this is where larger time frames come into play.

One could debate which the proper time-frame is, and to set a stake in the ground, I am going to use the daily chart as an example.