http://www.alphatrends.net/
http://www.thekirkreport.com/
http://www.slopeofhope.com/
http://www.tradingwithtk.com/
http://www.thinkorswim.com/
http://www.redoption.com/
Also, some good books to start with are;
Trading In the Zone, Mark Douglas
Mastering The Trade, John Carter
High Probability Trading, Link
Trade Your Way To Financial Freedom, Tharp
Learn the basics of "Technical Analysis" before you read these books. Understand Candlestick Charting, Moving Averages, Support & Resistance, RSI, Channels etc.
There are many great books out there…. Don't read any of them until you've gone through these. Don't ever underestimate the importance of money management, position sizing & trading psychology.
This will take at least a year to get through. Do it and you'll save yourself from many costly mistakes.
Besides account requirements, there's also taking into consideration commissions versus trade value. To buy and sell stock can cost anywhere from $10-$40 overall, so you should be expecting profit exceeding this before entering a trade, which means trade size is a key component. Average daily volume of a stock wil lgive you an idea of what you can expect to be able to buy or sell.
Utilizing different technical indicators such as stochastics, RSI, MACD, moving averages, and price change patterns could give insight into possible future price changes, but these are all speculative and should be used with caution. I would caution anyone who is a beginner trader/investor about day trading. For short term gains, it's better, and less risky, to find stocks about to increase over the next few days/weeks/months. You'll more than likely realize more gains at less of a risk. It's up to you to learn how to do this correctly, but it can be a much more reliable method of trading rather than day trading. Good luck!
Many thanks in anticipation.
I am new to all these markets and looking to start with it.
I wanted to go for an Online Trading Company like India Bulls, Sharekhan etc.
I aim for being both a Long Term Investor in 2-3 Shares, and do regular Intra-Day Trading
I have seen India Bulls Charting system and found them to be good but don't know what are their Broker Charges, Account Opening Charges?
But there will be important pointers to what should also be considered while deciding on the trading platform. So here goes.
I have personal experience with ICICIDirect, HDFC Securities and Motilal Oswal. I don't trade on a daily basis and am a long term investor. So for me brokerage rates don't matter much.
For me what matters are the following:
1. Reliability of the platform -I can transact when I want
2. Correctness in transaction records, account debits, demat credits, shortfall management
3. User-friendliness of interface - you can find what you want quickly
4. Promptness of customer helpdesk in replying to emails
5. Ability to do everything from one single place - like demat account, trading account, and bank account are all managed by the same entity, so there is single place of accountability
Given all these in my experience ICICIDirect still scores the best. It has the highest no of subscribers. It used to have some transaction problems earlier, but over the past year, I cannot recollect instances where I couldn't execute a buy/sell when I wanted it. (HDFC Securities & Motilal OSwal both have miles to go on this front, systems cant keep up with the load on exceptionally high traffic days -jan 22/23). Their User interface is the best, you can locate what to do and where very fast, almost intuitively. Their transaction records are impeccable, you have peace of mind. Couldn't say the same for Motilal Oswal (I had to track and remind them to make good the shortfall when I bought and paid for 20 shares of Wyeth Pharma but demat was only for 16 after a week). And single place of accountability makes sure i deal with the same party and can get things resolved faster.
No matter what arguments you hear against, perhaps the biggest argument in favour of ICICIDirect is that they have been operating these services from 1999. That's close to a decade of experience in handling extremes of load, variety of software and technical issues, customer complaints , and have matured over the years.
The others may give you cheaper brokerage rates (and that matters if you are a day trader) but have much more to cover before they can reach similar levels of maturity as a service provider.
My 2 cents. Hope they were useful & happy investing!
test it with quotetraker freeware
It is true that 80% of all day traders eventually lose all their money. Then again, about 60% of the remaining 20% make enough to live off of or at least provide a second income. The remaining 40% steadily lose money.
The keys to success in day trading (% of importance):
1) money management - knowing how much to bet on each stock, when to take profits, and when to cut losses (40%)
2) emotional control - patience, not acting out of greed or fear, never averaging down, only buying high probability set-ups, etc. (35%)
3) a good system - knowing when to enter and when to exit (25%)
You'll notice that the system is the least important factor for success. Almost any system is profitable (although some much more than others), but the real important part is whether you can actually use it correctly or not. It might not match your personality, for example. Also, if you don't manage your money correctly, you can go bankrupt on even the best system in the world.
Unless you have amazing emotional control, have a natural inborn talent for trading (I've never met anyone like this, though), or have a brilliantly flexible mind that adapts quickly, you will most likely steadily lose money day trading for at least the first few months.
The worst part about getting started in day trading is that there's very little way to tell if you'd be successful before you actually start buying stocks and losing (or making) money. Paper trading is not even close to the same as real trading, because there's no emotion involved, or commissions or slippage.
On the other hand, once you have reached the right point, the rewards can be substantial. It took me 15 months of swing trading and staring at computer screens all day long and three months of day trading (losing 50% of my entire equity in the process) before I turned the corner. Now, I can quite conservatively double my money each year (but notice it took me a year to recover from the first year and a half). That's probably a typical story. If you read about Stock Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, you'll notice that almost every master trader went bankrupt at one point or another.
Most people quit before they reach this point, and I'd be the first to agree that day trading is not for everyone, or even for most people.
Also, remember this: any person with a truly successful and profitable day trading system would never sell or share it. You can make much more money using a winning system than selling it. Okay, maybe 10% of the systems out there are legitimate, but you'll never know which 10% until you've bought it and lost lots of money on it.
Be careful when looking for winning systems, and always look for a money-back guarantee.
The key to success is not the system the person uses so much as it is the person using the system.
One last word of advice: Unless you're willing to sacrifice thousands of hours in front of the computer and thousands of dollars, and able to stand the emotional and financial pain you will endure, then don't even start.
I have nothing bad to say about them, and I have not heard negatives from others either. In the survey mentioned above, they also scored well on customer satisfaction.
That being said, with the market has been swinging up and down the way it has been in the past few months and I’d like to get in and get out quickly on certain trades.
The fact that some of these brokers expect you to to hold a position for weeks or even months is just ridiculous, especially in a market like this one.
Does day trrading affect the market in a negative way? Hell, it can’t be worse than naked short selling.
Ive found some loop holes in certain online brokers and have been able to successfully day trade but it is very hard and not really fast enough. I was wondering if anyone else knows of any online brokers that allow day trading for the small investor without heavy restriction.
the restriction is to make sure that small investors (i.e. people who don’t even have 25k) don’t lose their shirts, and cheat the IRS out of tax revenue, because you are totally inept and will have carry-forward losses for the next decade.
this, of course, gets re-packaged as concern for small investors who need protection from themselves. but don’t let that fool you - it’s all about the tax revenue. nobody really cares enough about you to bother protecting you.
Is this considered pattern day trading? I am selling, THEN buying the same stock in one trading day. I am under the impression, however, that the activity I described above is NOT pattern day trading, because I am not buying and the selling the same POSITION in one trading day. Thus, I should be able to do the above 5 days a week without being designated as a pattern day trader by Ameritrade, correct?
A day trader buys and sell the same security on the same day. Day traders like to be flat when the market closes and not carry over positions.
A pattern trader is one that day trades (buys then sells or sells short then buys the same security on the same day) four or more times in five business days, provided the number of day trades are more than six percent of the customer’s total trading activity for that same five-day period.
It is not Ameritrade that decides who is or who isn’t a pattern trader, it is the SEC. So you can relax, you’re not a pattern trader, so don’t worry about it until you’re start going in and out on the same day in the same security
Now you can go out and enjoy yourself - happy trading, go get em