Day trading involves you taking intra day trades in a stock, futures or forex market, with those positions being closed at the end of the day.  As a day trader you do not hold any position overnight.

If you are a newbie day trader and start day trading without first having a defined day trading course or day trading system in place, you will be destined for failure and will be taken out the market before you know what hits you!

If you have learned how to day trade, you will agree the gains can be absolutely brilliant, to the extent of providing you with a blueprint to give up your day job!  In short, in order to day trade, you need to have discipline, an eye for detail, rigid execution of positions, courage and an ironclad application of the cardinal rule "cut your losses and run your profits".  Here are two important day trading facts:

FACT 1:

Market makers, brokers and other day traders do not care for your inexperience and whether you have a day trading system in place. In fact they will thrive on the fact if you do not.  You are up against some very talented individuals who sit behind a trading screen 12 to 14 hours day trading, and who have perfected their own day trading system which fits their trading personality.  These day traders have the ability to control and manipulate the markets to a certain extent.

FACT 2:

The reality behind any day trading system is, your gain is your brokers LOSS.  In fact, there are only two types of traders - Winners and Losers.  Ninety five  out of one hundred don't make it in the field. For their failure they blame everyone but themselves.  There is only one person to blame - You.  Your broker has every incentive to stake the odds and spreads against you. 

To succeed at day trading you need to build your knowledge base and teach yourself all the day trading  critical  success factors to build your own day trading system.

How To Day Trade

Due to this rapid speed of day trading you will need to learn to capture explosive, short term, intraday moves.  One such technique is scalping.  Scalping enable you to to scalp the market with a counter-trend technique that offers multiple intraday trading opportunities and by reading volume you can anticipate turning points in the market.

As a day trader you will trade markets trends both up and down. In fact, as a profitable day trader so long as you are consistently making hundreds of dollars profit a day you do not care whether the market is moving up or down!

Some day traders will advocate you need advanced knowledge of technical analysis.  All you need really need is a 1 minute chart, the mindset of a Futures Pit Trader and learn to specialise and concentrate in one market at a time.  Real Futures Pit Traders on Bloomberg, don't trade Coffee today and Orange Juice tomorrow - they specialise and trade in one market alone.  YOU MUST ALSO ADOPT THIS TO MAKE PROFITS.

Day Trading Tips and Strategies...

How do you identify an entry point for a day trade?  The short answer is do your own research, learn to trade and devise your own day trading system which fits your personality.  There are also a number of free web sites which will provide you with morning and evening updates of profitable futures trades.  This will take the pain out of sitting in front of the screen for hours on end.  There also some good trading systems that give you 3-4 trades per day on a 5 minute S&P chart.