Day Trading is the act of buying and selling securities intra-day with the expectation of making fast profits within minutes to hours. Popularized during the bull market of the late 1990s, day trading is the practice of buying and selling stocks over a very short period of time, typically one day. Once the domain of floor traders and investment banks, the availability of inexpensive computers and fast Internet access has brought day trading to the masses.
Day traders come in all shapes and forms, using mechanical to systematic day trading systems, and can place anywhere from one to thousands of trades per day.
Day trading strategies typically follow one of two approaches: beating the spread or attempting to catch short term trends. The spread is the difference between what is being offered for a stock (the bid) and the price being asked for the stock (the ask). Spread trading attempts to buy at the bid and sell at the ask, over and over again. Spread traders may make hundreds or even thousands of such trades a day. With the advent of spreads as low as one penny, spread trading has become much less profitable than it once was.
Counter-trend traders will look for signs that a stock is topping or bottoming out before they place a trade in the opposite direction. For example, reversal traders use tools such as the TICK, TICKI, Put Call Ratio, volume, etc. to anticipate a change in trend.
The term “day trading” is a widely misused and misunderstood term. Real day trading means not holding on to your stock positions beyond the current trading day; in other words, not holding any position overnight. This is really the safest way to do day trading because you are not exposed to the potential losses that can occur when the stock market is closed due to news that can affect the prices of your stocks.
Unfortunately, many people who claim to be “day trading,” hold stocks overnight because of fear or greed, thus setting themselves up for the catastrophic elimination of their capital. When day trading currencies, the term “day trading” changes slightly. Since currencies can be traded 24-hours-a-day, there is no such thing as “overnight” trading. Thus, you can have open positions for longer than a day with active stop losses that can be activated at any time.
Day trading is an investment tactic that does online daily stock trading with a relatively short investment. Those who do day trading usually buy and sell securities during the same market day and, as a general rule, do not hold stocks overnight. Many day traders make dozens of trades every market day hoping to capture profits that arise from small intraday price fluctuations..
You basically watch the stock market all day long, buy and sell multiple times throughout the day, trying to buy it low and selling it high and then rebuying it when it drops back down, etc. Very dangerous, and hard to do. Studies have shown day traders do worse in the long run than buying stocks and holding onto them for longer terms. Plus you have to pay commission or fees every time you buy and sell, and taxes on your capital gains are higher for stocks held for less than a year.