Day trading is often considered one of the riskiest ways to trade on the stock market. The reason why it’s claimed that day trading is more risky than other forms of trading is that day traders trade large quantities of stock for short periods of time, often only minutes, and given the large position sizes they take, large amounts of money can be either made or lost due to very small fluctuations on the market.
However, the amount of risk taken by a day trader is only dependent on the actions of that trader. He can chose to trade, or not, and he can chose which stocks to trade, when to trade them and how large his position size should be. The only danger to a day trader is his ability to properly plan trades, and maintain a consistent risk/reward ratio.
Proper planning involved knowing exactly how much you can lose in a trade, in a day, week, etc. It also involved having an understanding of your chances of winning or losing your trades based on previous performance. This allows you to come up with proper position sizes based on the expected gain or loss in a stock. If you’ve decided you should only lose $100 on any given trade, then you should plan the trade accordingly. This will vary from trade to trade, depending on the setup, and the volatility of a given stock, but say you think you only need a .10 point loss window, then you’re position size should not exceed 1000. A loss of .10 in a stock you own 100 shares of will come to a loss of $100. This is how you limit your risk when day trading stock online.
While is is true that a day trader can win or lose a lot of money in short period of time, their calculations are based on experience. This is experience in the market, with that particular stock, and with their own psychology. This combined allows them to plan position size, targets, and losses; effectively planning a trade end to end no matter the outcome. If you properly learn how to day trade, then it’s really no more risky than any other form of investing based on speculation.