What is Day Trading?

Have you heard of day traders? These are people who reap profits from Wall Street day in day out. They do nothing but trade, they answer to no one but themselves. Day trading is their livelihood, their bread and butter. Day trading is profit driven. If you have aims other than making money from the markets, you are probably reading the wrong article. This is not an article for gamblers who seek short term thrills in the markets, nor is it meant to be a theorectical exposition on day trading for academic researchers.

Why day trade? Is it worth the effort? Day trading offers the road to financial freedom. The day trader is independent. He is free from the office routine, not restraint by time or place, he works when and where he fancies. This is the power of day trading!

What does it takes? You don't need to be extremely smart to be successful in day trading. The most successful day traders are those who have the iron-resolve and solid discipline. Intelligence is certainly welcomed, but is not an essential criterion for success. I was never the top in my class and always scrapped through my exams. SO WHAT? I am making big bucks by just trading a few hours per day.

Don't get me wrong, I am not profitable from day one. This article does not offer another get rich fast campaign. It took me almost one year of daily trading to reach where I am now. Constantly revising and researching on various methods finally paid off. It is hard work and you are not going to get any richer just by just reading and not practicing. Can you drive a car just by reading the manual? You have to practice what you learn. I hope you can learn something from this article to jumpstart your trading.

Day Trading VS Investing

There is a distinct difference between day trading and investing. The main difference is the time frame and methodology used. Investing requires a much longer time frame than trading, from months to years to decades. Usually you want to select a good company that will not go bankrupt the next day you purchase it. You will also want to analyze the fundamentals of the companies, make sure it is in good financial health and has a competitive advantage relative to other companies in the industry.

Trading takes a different approach to making money. The time frame considered is short from a few minutes to hours to days, weeks or maybe a month. Specifically, day trading refers to strictly trading within the day. This means that you do not hold positions overnight. For example, if you buy at 10:00 (EST), you have to sell before 16:15(EST) when the market closes.

There are no rules against holding overnight but risk is minimized if trading is strictly restricted to within the day. The market often moves in reaction to news when exchanges are closed. Stocks usually do not have much liquidity and trade on light volume after market hours. Imagine what would happen to your long position when there is a sudden hurricane strike when market is closed. The market will drop but you might not be able to sell at a reasonable price due to low volume. I sleep better at night when I know have no open positions overnight. Whatever losses and winnings are strictly during market hours when there is enough volume to trade. How the market moves after the closing bell does not affect me and I start the next day with a new state of mind.