Day Trading

While day trading is neither illegal nor is it unethical, it can be highly risky. Most individual investors do not have the wealth, the time, or the temperament to make money and to sustain the devastating losses that day trading can bring.

Here are some of the facts that every investor should know about day trading:

Be prepared to suffer severe financial losses

Day traders typically suffer severe financial losses in their first months of trading, and many never graduate to profit-making status. Given these outcomes, it's clear: day traders should only risk money they can afford to lose. They should never use money they will need for daily living expenses, retirement, take out a second mortgage, or use their student loan money for day trading.

Day traders do not "invest"

Day traders sit in front of computer screens and look for a stock that is either moving up or down in value. They want to ride the momentum of the stock and get out of the stock before it changes course. They do not know for certain how the stock will move, they are hoping that it will move in one direction, either up or down in value. True day traders do not own any stocks overnight because of the extreme risk that prices will change radically from one day to the next, leading to large losses.

Day trading is an extremely stressful and expensive full-time job

Day traders must watch the market continuously during the day at their computer terminals. It's extremely difficult and demands great concentration to watch dozens of ticker quotes and price fluctuations to spot market trends. Day traders also have high expenses, paying their firms large amounts in commissions, for training, and for computers. Any day trader should know up front how much they need to make to cover expenses and break even.

Day traders depend heavily on borrowing money or buying stocks on margin

Borrowing money to trade in stocks is always a risky business. Day trading strategies demand using the leverage of borrowed money to make profits. This is why many day traders lose all their money and may end up in debt as well. Day traders should understand how margin works, how much time they'll have to meet a margin call, and the potential for getting in over their heads.

Don't believe claims of easy profits

Don't believe advertising claims that promise quick and sure profits from day trading. Before you start trading with a firm, make sure you know how many clients have lost money and how many have made profits. If the firm does not know, or will not tell you, think twice about the risks you take in the face of ignorance.

Watch out for "hot tips" and "expert advice" from newsletters and websites catering to day traders

Some websites have sought to profit from day traders by offering them hot tips and stock picks for a fee. Once again, don't believe any claims that trumpet the easy profits of day trading. Check out these sources thoroughly and ask them if they have been paid to make their recommendations.

Remember that "educational" seminars, classes, and books about day trading may not be objective

Find out whether a seminar speaker, an instructor teaching a class, or an author of a publication about day trading stands to profit if you start day trading.

Check out day trading firms with your state securities regulator

Like all broker-dealers, day trading firms must register with the SEC and the states in which they do business. Confirm registration by calling your state securities regulator and at the same time ask if the firm has a record of problems with regulators or their customers. You can find the telephone number for your state securities regulator in the government section of your phone book or by calling the North American Securities Administrators Association at (202) 737-0900. NASAA also provides this information on its website at www.nasaa.org/QuickLinks/ContactYourRegulator.cfm.

Instead, read the Intelligent Investor and follow Warren Buffett. Get a great job and invest the proceeds wisely.

Best Regards,

Docmase

By law the minimum amount needed to open a daytrading account is $25,000. This will open a margin account, with which you can daytrade up to four times the amount that you have in your account. So with a minimum account of $25,000 you can daytrade up to $100,000 per day. (There are some restrictions) You must pay interest on any amount that you hold overnight that is in excess of the cash in your account. Daytraders never hold anything overnight.

There are many different styles of daytrading. You can trade gaps up, or gaps down. You can trade technicals or breakouts. You can trade a particular stock or group of stocks. Each style requires a specific set of tools and the skills to use them. At a minimum you will need a good broadband internet connection, streaming level 2 quotes, and a good broker. Quotetracker is a good, free platform that you can download and try, just to get a feel for what is involved. Also I believe that Scottrade will let you download and try their platform for free.

The broker that you choose depends upon your style of trading and the volume that you trade. Flat fee commission brokers like Scottrade are fine if you trade volumes above 1000 shares at a time. On a thirty dollar stock, that's $30,000 per trade. Personally I may buy more than 1000 shares, but I'll often take a position 100 shares at a time. So in my case paying $7 for each of those 100 share trades would kill me on commissions. Instead I use a broker that charges per share, not per trade. If you're not dealing in high volume it's best to pay per share, not per trade. That way you can buy 100 shares and it will only cost you $1 in commission.

The other thing that you should consider, just in case you do make money daytrading, is taxes. Although the advent of online tax services has made keeping track of all those daytrades considerably easier, it can still be a headache. It's much easier just to buy a stock, hold it all year, and then pay the taxes on it. Very simple.

I do not believe that daytrading is the best way to go for a beginner. It would be better to start by just buying and holding, or swingtrading. Personally I now use a service that sends me alerts on what to buy and sell. It actually works much better than I could ever do on my own, and it's a whole lot easier. Still it's quite common for me to lose $1000 or more per day. But on average my up days far outweigh my down days.

Yes, I do this for a living, and it is much easier than having a real job.

If you have a brokerage account at Wells Fargo then they have your information.

You are right, there 9 billion shares of Microsoft in the Planet but Wells Fargo only handles 0.01% of them with a regular $999 Dell Personal Computer.

If you have a brokerage account at Bank of America then they will have your private information and the same case applies.

There are thousands of banks all over the World and each one of them has a few thousands of Microsoft shares.

When you sell your Microsoft share to me Wells Fargo reduces the number of shares in your brokerage account from 1 to 0 and it only takes a nanosecond.

In contrast, the number of shares of Microsoft increases in my brokerage account from 0 to 1 and it only takes a nanosecond.

There is a middle man between Wells Fargo (Your bank) and Zecco (My broker)

In this case, the middle man is the NASDAQ.

The NASDAQ is a fully automated computer system. The tons of brokers instead of talking to the specialist just input their orders. The array of buy and sell orders form the bid/ask. When there's a match, the trade executes by computer.

There are some conservative strategies to invest in the forex market that many people consider too boring and evidently not complicated enough. It seems there is a breed of players entering the Forex market the same way they would belly up to a roulette wheel in Las Vegas.

I ran an analysis a couple of weeks ago that you may find interesting. First of all it is important to note that this is based on historical prices and is not necessarily representative of future results. But it is interesting.

Let's say that you opened a conservative hedge trade on the 1st of any month this year.with $10,000 and used a conservative margin of 10% You just let the account sit and didn't touch it what would it have looked like on 7/20/2007 (the day I ran the analysis).

If you opened your account on

Jan 1st = $13,161 on 7/20/2007
Feb 1st = $13,645
Mar 1st = $11,924
Apr 1st = $12,045
May 1st = $10,473
Jun 1st = $10,530

None of these accounts would have ever been close to a margin call and the Jan and Feb accounts would seem to have faired quite well through the China correction during late Feb / early Mar.

So I guess the morale of the story is that it is not the Forex market that is the problem. It is the human elements of greed, fear, lack of knowledge and lack of a conservative investment strategy.

It's not what you do it's how you do it!

Good luck with your decision process.

Paul

In order to understand how markets work it is always better to have a good knowledge of the markets themselves. Few traders actually know this and this explains why a lot lose money on the derivative markets. One of the key ingredients to success is to understand the fundamental basics of supply and demand. Chartism also plays its role if you take the time to undestand it.

What I don't like about the programs that give people technical analysis information and "buy" and "sell" signals is that despite their claims of instant riches why is it that most people who make money on the market NEVER use them? There is the old saying "if something seems too good to be true isn't it the case it usually is?"

Many years ago I received a maling shot through the post about a program that could predict the exact peaks and troughs of the FTSE and other major indices. It said it had 90% accuracy and went back as far as 1901 predicting the 1930's slump! You just push in numbers and like magic instant wealth is produced. Now that's amazing software!

A few months later the entire company were exposed as a fraud on BBC television – which hardly surprised me!

The truth is that there are so many variables to the movements in stock prices and commodities that having a clear set mathematical formula for success is almost impossible. If you understand the correct method of trading and how to use derivatives correctly you can be on the way to a small fortune but this requires intelligence, vigilance and patience – qualities that most traders don't have.

I have found Tradindex to a a superb company which have given me one of the easiest trading platforms imaginable. However, a lot boils down to personal taste.

Another company I highly recommend is this one:

http://www.finspreads.com

Also try this brilliant authoress:

Toni Turner (http://www.toniturner.com/)

Good luck with your trading!

Day trading — you buy and sell within the same trading day. Or sell and buy if you are shorting.

Note that if you are day trading on US exchanges there are regulations that must be met.

Because companies are releasing news almost 24 hours/day these days, their stock price reacts to these news releases whenever they become available. Also, the world does not go to sleep at 4 p.m. eastern time and stocks in general are reacting to all kinds of news being released on a 24 hour basis.

Individuals can participate in these after-hours market activity by having their trading accounts with brokerage companies which offer their customer access to their accounts via Direct Market Access systems. These systems are considered to be electronic trading systems and can be run on your computer at home utilizing high speed internet access like DSL, Cable or fibre-optics.

If you would like to get more information on Direct Market Access systems or open an electronic trading account I would suggest you speak to the guys I use. They can be contacted at:

http://rematatrading.com/contactus.aspx

They have been very professional and helpful to me.

Good luck.

There's not really a big problem in beginning to daytrade, but you need to be cautious. I'd advise you read this http://www.nyse.com/pdfs/im01-9Microsoft%20Word%20-%20Document%20in%2001-9.pdf

Then, you may want to continue paper trading, but you can trade for real if you set up strict losses. When I kick up my live account, I will close all my positions immediately if I lose 20%. Then, I will go back through my journals, the charts, and more paper trading until I get it right.

You can get all expenses lists from the individual sites under their fees + comissions and/or pricing tabs. If you are unclear of what they all are, just email the brokerage (I did this with several of tradeking's fees). You will need to get used to emailing and contacting people and services you will use or look into. Half of the battle of trading is finding everything you need — brokerage, information resources, software, data feeds, etc.

I've probably spent about half my time doing those kinds of things.