deaddog 

Is someone paying you a salary to do that?

15 years ago yes (but then days were even longer because there were meetings pre and post trading) but for the last 15 years nope. Just me.

jmp470 

Fellow traders, How many hours do you trade / watch the market? As a new person, who will try to balance work and trading, I'm curious how long you participate in the market for. For instance, today, I was doing well, but decided to close down the platform, as I didn't want to over trade. Nor give back profits.

I find the less time I spend watching the markets the better I do. I generally put in a swing trade ~ 90 minutes before or after the open and let it go for the day. I trade oil, gold, Nasdaq and treasuries and put in one contract for each. After a few hours I will add to my positions or if I got stopped out, put in a new trade and let it go to the close. But to answer your question usually I watch the markets for about 4 hours / day on average.

I used to study ONE market for ONE trade per day. Quite a time using period to find the patterns of this distinct market.
Today I am just preparing the trade for the day (using Asia numbers) and watch the IB aka entry half hour. The rest is using the pattern for the day of the week, start, end, stop loss and let it play out.
No longer glued to a screen. I even do not watch on the smartphone as this is a waste of time.
Good luck!
GFIs1

PS: Well what I forgot to say:
I am using more time to write about my trades on fio than time for the trade itself - LOL