Category: Day Trading


Use the Resources Available to You

If you have decided to become a day trader in today’s day and age, then you will see there is an enormous wealth of options for you to discover, process, and decide what will be best for you.  First you have to say to yourself, “What platform and I going to use with all there is available to me?”  There are tons of different platforms and I would highly suggest that you spend a few minutes to look into things such as, tradestation reviews to become fully aware of what other traders have to say about the platforms they use and why.

But this is just the beginning—just scratching the surface into all you would need to know about becoming a day trader.  All sorts of questions begin to arise as you take on this quest.  How do you determine what markets to trade? Should I choose a Black Box System over a Discretionary Strategy? Do I want to use tick charts or minute charts?  And what exactly are tick and minute charts?  It is almost enough to make you wonder if you chose the right path.

Luckily, you are not the first person to set foot in what may seem a little scary and definitely uncharted territories to you.  There are others, before you, who have had the same questions and had to carve out a way for not only themselves to understand, but for those who may follow their steps.  Chances are, they have even started a day trading blog in order to help those that may be struggling to see the light.They have taken their success and their mishaps and recorded them.  So, make sure you use your resources to see what those before you have encountered in order to help lead you to your success.

Day Trading Is As Popular As Ever

A highly effective way to make income is to use the securities market to your financial advantage. It has continued to be a good way to make money and offers different strategies that can work in one’s favor. One example of these strategies involves is day trading which depends heavily on market timing, which is something that can help people to make extra money. They can even make enough cash to add to your retirement or to just make a regular living. Day trading involves not only exchanging trades for the market. It can also be about doing other exchanges to make a profit too. Day trading for a living is fast becoming a popular thing and it is made so much easier thanks to the Internet.

The name for this kind of trader  can be a bit misleading. Day traders did not get the name because they only do trade stocks in the light of day. They are also not called this because they handle trading every day. The definition that applies most to a day trader is someone who is not only busy as a trader. But someone who regularly practices the buying and selling of securities as a strategy on the very same day of trading. A day trader is a person who buys and sells stock shares and positions before transactions are closed by the conclusion of a trading day. It may seem like an easy thing to do. However, it can be very complex at times, as well as quite involved in addition. .

This routine actually is about many different means for acquiring a wide range of stock market investment items. For example shaving is a famous method for making quick income on numerous amounts of stock. This shaver gets their shares out there for lower than fellow investors. If they want to buy, they may up their bidding in the same sums. Some traders use loaned money to perform their transactions. Still others may use a method known as scalping where things are put on hold for a little while before being purchased. An idea that accompanies these avenues is finding a source that seems to be changing somehow. Every trader must then decide if something will go forward in value or not. An individual employing this strategy may make tons of sales in 24 hours and the incorporation of trading programs online makes it faster for people to study. Traders can now use automated stock trading software to make this task quicker and more efficient.

It is not surprising to hear that the Committee of European Securities Regulators (known as CESR) is now looking into the high frequency trading practices that are becoming more and more common as banks and trading firms with big budgets adopt new technology.

CESR is the European counterpart to the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) in the United States, with its headquarters in Paris, France. It is CESR’s responsibility to watch over the financial markets and investigate any trading activities that may create a negative impact on equality, liquidity and efficiency of the market as a whole.

High frequency trading (HFT), which is mostly spearheaded by proprietary trading firms using ultra-fast computers located in close proximity to the exchanges, involves trading  in and out of stocks at high speed, often involving hundreds, or even thousands of transactions per second. The investigation has also been prompted by the high percentages that high frequency traders command of the overall market. HFT actually accounts for up to 70% of the activity in the US and 50% in the European equity markets, according to websites like the High Frequency Trading Review. It is no wonder that high frequency trading has drawn the attention of the CESR and the SEC.

The main concern of the regulators is with regard to fair trading practices. HFT is expensive, which means that only those firms with big budgets can afford to engage in the practice. And if these firms have an unfair advantage in that they can see, and trade on, prices ahead of traditional long-only investment firms, that could constitute front-running, which is illegal. But the big Wall Street firms that have the money to invest in high-frequency trading also have clout with government officials through lobbying, giving them support to control markets.

It makes perfect sense that the CESR and SEC would want to look a little deeper into this activity. It is however a very sensitive issue which will more than likely be a debate going into the future. The outcome of this situation will no doubt be attention-grabbing.

Is Day Trading Too Risky?

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.