Day Trading

This can work – it depends on how much attention you're willing to devote to it. I have found that any time I take my attention off of the market for a few hours or a few days, I'm punished by an opportunistic turn that I missed. This is not a maybe – it will happen if you're not at your desk. And when I focus 9:15 through 4:15, I perform, with a couple hours homework a night.

The books recommended by others here are great. It's hard to advise you further not knowing how much you do/don't know about the market. The paper trading practice sites are an essential. Try those out in earnest and you'll save yourself from unnecessary mistakes later when errors cost real money.

I find that it's important to do a few things:

1. Chart the S&P for uptrends and downtrends – when you see an established trend the market will tend to move that way, and stay within the down slope and up slope "channel" in its daily activity for multiple days. This gives you added confidence as to when to "buy", when to "add to" your position, and when to cash out. When a stock busts out up or down that can be the opportunity to get in or out (depending on direction) of a given index, ETF, or stock. This will also help you stabilize your stock monitoring because you will focus on the stocks at present which are near "support (floor)" or ceiling (resistance)" positions. To help me do this, I've found it is incredibly valuable to have a second computer screen (I use two PCs because I'm mobile when I want to be) with several key screens of data/chart references.

One screen has no more than 6 stocks I'm watching that day, with charts on each screen.

One screen has all major sectors' charts on it – by sector fund (USO, OIH, etc.)

One screen has 52 week uptrending stocks I'm monitoring for pullbacks

Other screens are categoric (e.g., AG companies)

2. Using other resources such as the 52 week high stocks (WSJ, YahooFinance, Google Finance, etc.), and Top 100 (IBD.com) are also opportunities to check for trends, and determine whether to jump on this momentum during a given day, or to wait for a pullback and get in before a multi-day upswing for a multi-day "swing" trade. If you put in the time, you will identify pending breakouts.

3. Listen to Fast Money to pick up on hot trends and expert interviews that can indicate stocks to watch since they have such a wide audience.

4. Keep track of volume levels and beware of low volume days.

5. Track sector movement and rotations. Institutional buyers will dictate what will move, whether it "makes sense" to you or not.

6. Listen to Art Cashen (sp?) – every morning about 9:15 AM EST before the market opens. His insights are usually good indicators to align with or watch for. Good pulse on the market.

7. Know that a margin account can be traded every day with no interest if you don't carry it over night. Non-margin accounts will have a 3 day carry cycle until you can reinvest the funds.

Best wishes for success. Cramer can be a goof on some topics, but knowing what he's tracking can also give you one or two key stocks to watch for the next day if conditions align to support those stocks. His trading rules lists are very good.

Before you do anything you should know what you’re doing, how to do it and why you are doing it.

To trade and/or invest you need four major programs in place before you do anything.
1 A written sound trading/investment plan with rules that will not only help you but more importantly protect you, mostly from yourself.
2 – Sufficient trading/investment capital. Use your own money, there’s no need to go into debt so that you trade/invest.
3 – A written money management program in place. Remember never invest 100% of your capital into any one security and never have 100% of your capital invested.
4 – A full and complete understanding of the rules & regulations of the industry.

Judging by the wording of your question you’re no where near being ready to do anything in the market. I’m not saying this as a put down but rather as a warning before you hurt yourself financially.

7) Goofing off, surfing the internet.

A friend of mine is a self-employed CFA and she does all of the above. #2 is probably the most important and takes the most time until you build up a client base, which could take many years. She runs her stuff through Fidelity so I think that takes care of most of the back office stuff.

Here are a few basics:
- Concentrate on a few, liquid and volatile stocks only.
- Buy or sell intra day trends with at least 3:1 reward-risk ratios.
- Use mental stops placed under the last minimum (above the last maximum, when shorting) and stick to them.
- Use a decent money management scheme, write down the rules and stick to them.
- Develop a system, trade it on paper only for some time, before risking money.

Here are some more, that I found useful too:
- Don't trade the first and last half hour.
- Stop trading on a given day when you have reached a set target amount or when you have lost a fixed amount.
- No more than two ongoing trades at one time.
- Take breaks, it's a stressful activity

Have you read John Carter's book yet? Mastering the Trade.

Also read Tom Busby's book, Winning the Day Trading Game.

They'll give you a good primer. Fantastic books to get you started. After that, you'll have a much better sense on what and where to go next.

One option would be to work with a mentor. Todd Mitchell looks interesting at tmitchell.com or tradingconcepts.com for trading.

Though if you go to daytrading, you'll need to practice a lot more than a couple of weeks. Most successful day traders I know practiced at least months before being somewhat successful as there's all sorts of nuances, the shorter the timeframe that you trade in.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Hope that helps!

Yes, it's called a margin account. And I don't know of any brokers that will allow you to day trade outside of one. With a margin account, you buy stocks with money you borrow from the broker (you pay interest on open margins). This way your money isn't tied up during trade settlement. Of course, you have to keep cash or stock in your account as collateral against the margin loan.

Day trading is definitely a great way to make huge profits but many people don't know the SEC rules on day trading. The SEC requires that you have a minium of $25,000 in your market account in order to day trade. I would recommend getting a scottrade account set up and using that as your broker to place orders. You can setup a joint account with another account holder and use the combined account balance to create your $25,000 minium balance. I personally bought 2 $10,000 CD's at a 6 month term to have a safe place for $20,000 and the other $5,000 was used for day trading. I've made lots and lost lots doing this so do your research when taking such risk. I've also made large profits in real estate but location and timing play a large part in that. Real estate is more of a long range investment tool and can eat you up if you don't run the numbers right! You have to keep in mind that you're paying interest on your loan, taxes always go up, home owners insurance, and the rent money isn't always on time. A great place to invest internationally is cancun! Great rentals and its always a hot spot!

The limit is 5 day trades per week, not 5 trades per week.

Although it may not be obvious, day-trading creates certain risks for brokerages and exchanges as well as the individuals doing the trading.

The higher account requiremens reduce the risks for brokerages and exchanges. For more information see

http://www.nasd.com/web/groups/rules_regs/documents/notice_to_members/nasdw_003881.pdf

Not only do they apply to etfs, they also apply to etf options.

You have to test different SMA/EMA strategies to see which one works best for you. Generally speaking, short term trading uses short term averages. Long term or position trade with longer averages (50 day SMA or greater).

If you're talking only a few a days, then use short term EMA. EMA is more sensitive to price changes.