How to Legally Be a Day Trader

Day traders usually try to make money in the market by buying a security as soon as the value rises or by selling it short when they think the stock will fall. (In other words, they bet against action.) Day traders aim to use market volatility to their advantage, regardless of the direction it takes – up or down. Familiarity with stocks and market fundamentals is not enough to succeed as a trader. You need to understand technical analysis and all the tools used to analyze chart patterns, trading volumes, and price movements. Some of the most common indicators are support and resistance levels, moving average convergence divergence (MACD), volatility, price oscillators and Bollinger Bands. Now let`s take a look at a separate example of how you might be „labeled“ as a model day trader. Let`s say you open a $10,000 trading account: stocks, futures, options, ETFs, and mutual funds all trade differently. Without a clear understanding of a security`s trading characteristics and requirements, launching a trading strategy can lead to failure. For example, traders need to know how margin requirements for futures, options, and commodities have a significant impact on trading capital, or how an interim sale or exercise of an option position can completely destroy the trading plan. Day trading refers to buying and selling securities and stocks and then selling them on the same day for the purpose of making a profit.

At the end of the trading day, a day trader has closed all his positions and made profits or losses. On September 28, 2001, FINRA and the NYSE changed their definitions of day traders. A new term they use is „pattern day trader“. An investor can be classified as a model day trader by exhibiting one of two characteristics: According to Angelo, who has a decade of experience trading derivatives, day trading is a difficult task. She said it requires an analytical mind and many of the people she has seen succeed have backgrounds in industries that require years of training and practice. If you want to become a day trader to get rich overnight, you will end up losing large sums of money. It takes time and practice to become an effective day trader. So, if about 90% of day traders lose money, how can one expect to make a living this way? The answer lies in professional training, careful research, refined skills, great discipline and the ability to admit mistakes and reduce losses. You need to be prepared to make emotionless split-second decisions based on information that is sometimes incomplete, contradictory, and changed by the second. Statistics prove that this is clearly much easier said than done.

Typically, the largest movement occurs around 10:30 a.m. ET, about an hour after the market opens. Later in the day, the market usually cools down and there is less volatility. Volatility is how day traders make money (lows buy and sell high), so the less volatile the market, the less attractive it is to day traders. Of course, every market day is unique, and there could be extenuating circumstances that also lead to volatility in the afternoon. At the height of the tech bubble in the late 1990s, day traders easily made money buying and selling Internet stocks. It didn`t take a lot of skills to succeed at the time. In just 17 months, between October 1998 and March 2000, the NASDAQ composite rose from about 1,344 to a peak of about 5,132. All you had to do was ride this tidal wave to reap the benefits. Many of these traders discovered the index on its way to a low of around 1,108 in October 2002, as much as the index lost 78% of its value in 31 months.

Theoretically, you only need enough money to buy a stock. If you were priceless, you could turn this action into a fortune, however unrealistic this theoretical example may be. In reality, day traders often lose money long before making a profit. Therefore, it is better to invest disposable income only in day trading activities. Day trading with retirement savings or borrowed money is never advisable. There are two different types of day traders. Professional day traders work for large financial institutions. They have access to the tools and training they need to succeed in their careers.

The great advantage of being a professional day trader is that you don`t trade with your own capital. Instead, it is capital from customers and/or the company, so there is no risk to equity. Most professional traders are able to leave their emotions and biases at the door. Develop a process and try it with fictitious professions.