Pocket Option tries its best to make the process of trading as comfortable and accessible as possible. There is a great selection of assets for you to choose from, including stocks, currency pairs, commodities, cryptocurrencies, and indices. Trading on the platform involves not only choosing the trading instruments, amounts, and indicators but also deciding on the trade expiration time. Understanding what it is and how it is used may be quite confusing at first. Below you can find a quick guide on how to use trade expiration times in your trading on Pocket Option.
Contents
Time Feature on Quick Trading
The time settings bar on Quick Trading can be found on the right-hand side of the interface. The numbers on this bar indicate the trade expiry time i.e. when the trading operation is going to be closed. The countdown starts right after you press “Higher” or “Lower” and you will get the result of the trade within the chosen expiry time; you can see the time left under the “Opened” Trades on the right-hand side of the screen. You can choose the time to be anywhere between 5 seconds (that is the minimum) up to 4 hours (maximum trade expiry).
Time Feature on Digital Trading
Time settings in Digital Trading are slightly different as here there are fixed time frames to be chosen that determine the time until a position is opened i.e. when the contract is bought. The length of the minimum time frame is 1 minute (M1) and the maximum is 4 hours (H4). This broad range of time frames allows traders with different goals and skill levels to choose frames that best suit their strategies. Note that there is a 30-second gap between the time until purchase (the time frame you choose on the Time bar) and the time until the contract’s expiration, as shown on the image below. 
You can see a white vertical line on the chart which shows the time that is left before a position is opened (the countdown, essentially) and the second line, which shows the time when the position expires. This means that the expiry time is the purchase time plus 30 seconds. The position is closed as soon as the price reaches the second line.
Time settings on the Chart
Pocket Option allows you to customize the duration of a candle, a bar, or a Heiken Ashi bar on the chart i.e. the time between it opens and closes. This allows you to match the length of your trading time frame to the length of the candles or bars on the chart i.e. longer candles can be used for longer trading frames and vice versa.
Final Notes
Choosing the right expiry time frame may be challenging and depends largely on your skills, strategy, and trading goals. The gains you make from trading depend on whether you correctly anticipated the direction of the trade, higher or lower, as well as on the difference between the price you purchased the asset for and the price at expiry. The challenge is, of course, foreseeing by how much the instrument will go up or down and when. For some fast-paced strategies that are based on short-term market movements short expiry may be used, but trading them is quite tricky, others focus on larger price swings and hence longer frames would be appropriate; choosing the right approach requires a lot of skill and preparation. Do not forget about the dangers associated with trading and practice your time-setting strategy well on a Demo account before risking your capital.
Traders try to use appropriate indicators depending on your choice of the trade expiration time. Pocket Option offers a great variety of different indicators, from simple SMA, Bollinger Bands, and RSI to more complex like MACD and Aroon.
Hopefully, now you have a better idea of how Trade Expiry tools work on Pocket Option. Best of luck and enjoy trading on the platform!
Risk Warning: The trading products offered by the companies listed on this website carry a high level of risk and can result in the loss of all your funds. You should never trade money that you cannot afford to lose.