The Best Day Trading Tips For Beginners

Day trading refers to selling and buying financial instruments. If you are a beginner to day trading, here are some important tips to consider.

  1. Keep Up The Knowledge – Besides learning about the trading procedures, you need to keep up with stock market news and events. You should do your homework and know the stocks that you want to trade then find out more information about them.
  2. Set Aside Some Funds – You need to assess how much money you are willing to spend on each stock trade. You can risk about 1% to 2% and invest the rest. However, you need to have the best knowledge to avoid any further issues.
  3. Find Time To Do IT – Day trading requires time as well as money for successful transactions. As a day trader, you need to track the markets and choose the right stocks to trade in. Remember, a good trade can happen at any time. You need to move quickly if you want to be successful.
  4. Start Small – As a beginner, you should focus on at least one or two stocks during any session. It’s easier to track and find opportunities with a few stocks. If possible, you can opt for fractional shares of stocks for the best results.
  5. Don’t Do Penny Stocks – As a day trader, you might be looking for deals with low prices but you should stay away from penny stocks. They are actually illiquid and you have very few chances of hitting a jackpot. Unless you have done your research and see a real opportunity of making money, stay away from these stocks.
  6. Proper Timing Is Important – Any orders placed by day traders start being executed when the markets open so there’s a huge price volatility. An experienced day trader can easily recognize patterns and pick the right stocks appropriately to make profits from their trades. However, for a beginner, it’s a good idea to read the market without making any moves.
  7. Don’t Force Yourself With Limit Orders – You need to decide on the best orders to enter or exit trades. For instance, will you use limit or market orders for your transactions? Note that, when you use a market order, it will be executed at the best price without a price guarantee. A limit order guarantees the prices but not the execution.

In conclusion, being a successful day trader depends on your skill and research on any stock before trading.

Day Trading Explained

Day trading is the buying and selling of different financial instruments like currencies, stocks, options, and future to make a profit from the difference between the selling price and the buying price. However, day trading slightly differs from other forms of trading in that its positions are seldom held overnight or when markets are closed.

A while back, day trading was only available to financial institutions like banks as they were the only ones that had access to market data and the exchanges. However, recent technology — the internet in particular – has made it possible for individual traders to have direct access to market data and the exchanges and to trade at low costs.

Day Trading Styles

There are several day trading styles available and range from the longer term swing and position trading where positions are held throughout a trading day to shorter-term trading like scalping, which is where traders hold positions for no more than a few minutes. A majority of day trading systems are quite flexible and can have several open positions for anywhere between a couple of minutes to several hours, depending on how a particular trade is doing – that is if it is profitable.

While some traders use multiple trading styles, a majority of day traders prefer using a single type of trading and stick to it.

It is also worth noting that there are several types of trades in day trading. These include ranging trades, trend trades, and counter-trend trades.

  • Ranging trades go back and forth between a set of prices and are generally used when the market is on a sideways move.
  • Trend trades are made following the direction the current price movement is going – that is, buying when the price is going up.
  • Counter-trend trades, on the other hand, are trades made against the direction of current price movements – that is, selling when prices are going up.

A majority of day traders will pick a single style of trading while others prefer using several types and choose the best one to use depending on current market conditions.

Apart from type and style of day trading, there are a few more differences between day traders. Some prefer making many trades through the course of a trading day while others prefer waiting for the “right” conditions to trade and often make one trade a day. Regardless of the number of trades made per day, the trading process used and the goal, which is to make a profit, remain the same.

Day Trading Markets

There are lots of markets, or financial instruments, that can be used to day-trade, and are generally offered by exchanges from around the globe. The main markets when it comes to day trading include options markets, stock markets, futures, and currencies. Within these markets, there are “sub-markets” that are based on stock indexes (like the DAX and the Dow Jones), commodities (oil and gold), and currency exchange rates (e.g., Euro to US Dollar exchange rate). Day traders can gain access to all of these markets and exchanges via direct access brokers – they offer day traders direct access to the exchange of their choice, allowing them to trade much faster and at lower costs.

2 Simple Day Trading Rules You Must Follow To Be Successful

The idea of day trading for a living is a powerful one. Work from home. No boss telling you what to do. Make a lot of money in a short period of time and watch it grow. Financial freedom and a great lifestyle. Click here to learn more.

But anyone who’s done day trading will tell you it’s not like that at all. Sure, it can be a great way to make a living. But it’s not easy, it’s real work. And it is definitely risky. You could easily lose everything if you’re not careful and prepared.

That brings us to some simple, but important rules that must be followed. While the rules are simple, they aren’t always easy to follow. Especially the first rule which is to leave your emotions out of it.

Leaving your emotions out of financial decisions that could make you, or lose you, a lot of money is not an easy thing to do. But you must do it if you want to be successful with day trading.

Emotional day trading will lead to bad decision. You’ll buy at too high a price, sell too late (or too early) all because you’re emotionally tied to a trade. Don’t be.

This leads us into another important rule which is to have a plan. Having a plan isn’t just good in and of itself, it also helps make it easier to keep your emotions out of your trading.

If you have a plan to buy or sell when certain signals are met, such as trading volume or stock price, you can eliminate the emotion of the trade. You buy or sell based on those signals you’ve decided upon.

Having a plan, based on actual data and not perceptions, that you stick to and taking your emotions out of your day trading is what separates day trading winners (those that make money) and day trading losers (those that go broke).

If you trade emotionally, you’re really doing nothing more than gambling. Gambling is about odds, luck, and feelings. It’s a surefire way to go broke when trading.

With day trading, it’s minimizing and controlling risk as best you can, while seeking gain.

A good analogy with gambling is blackjack. A gambler will bet, double down, take a hit or stand pat based on how they feel. And they will lose money in the long term.

But a very good blackjack player can make all the decisions systematically, maybe can even count cards, thus possibly allowing them to gain a slight advantage, which helps them to make money in the long term.

Your day trading is no different. By following a plan, or trading system, based on the data, with buy and sell rules, you’ll give yourself the best possible chance of making a profit from your trades in the long term.

Before you even get into the intricacies of trading, like technical or fundamental analysis, volume trading, trend trading, or the many other trading philosophies, you need to make sure you put together an overall plan, which will help you take the emotion out of your trading.