Day Trading

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!

Buy and Sell orders are usually executed within a few seconds for all trading platforms. But the order entry may be easier and faster on some platforms than on others.

Not all day-traders trade the same way. If you trade only once or twice a day. Then any platform might be suitable for you. But if you trade many times a day. Then you might need a platform where it's easy to enter Buy and Sell orders.

TD Ameritrade & E-Trade are not true “day trading” platforms.

Whether you make money is up to you.

Whether you make money is up to you.

Some strategies you can research are:

Trend Following
Scalping
Momentum Trading
Range Trading
News Trading (buying/selling on news or anticipation thereof)

All but news trading involve some form of Technical Analysis which I would advise you to read about as well.

I would also recommend you start looking into an ECN (electronic communication network) to use as your primary trading platform.

Wiki has a lot of information you can use, but I would always recommend reading independently and doing research online. Some authors you can look up are Alexander Elder, Michael Covel, Curtis Faith and John Murphy to name a few.