Day Trading

This depends on the amount of money you are using as risk capital.
A fair average might be 4-8% per month, assuming you are trading successfully. Day trading needs to be treated like a job and a business.

You will lose money, and you can make money. When your returns exceed your losses consistently, you can consider yourself successful. Keep educating yourself, and learn to manage your risk/losses.

This is just a couple of paragraphs a copied and pasted from the bottomm links ( this is a fairly long article). They helped me a lot when i was researching about short/long term forex strategies and tips. All the rest of the helpful articles are in the 'forex resources' section on http://www.forextradinghq.com

In order to profit from the forex market, you will need strategies and also the will to change these strategies. Traders who lack a well thought out trading plan are prone to panic and confusion, when unexpected swings in the forex market occur. Many traders will tell you that trade driven by emotion is the fastest way to deplete your funds. Whether or not you are using a technical or fundamental style, it is still essential that you have a proper view of the market.

Developing your own trading style is a time consuming process and is often acquired through trail and error. It is unfortunate that there is no ‘golden’ rule’ to trade in the forex market and technical and fundamental styles of trade won’t be successful all the time. Successful traders often have a unique style of trading and take up various strategies during a trading session. Only continuous practice will help you gain a feel for the movements of the forex market.

To draw the range, you need to connect the highs togeter to find level of resistance and then lows to find level of support.

This range between level of resistance and level of support is the trading range.

The idea of using differnt duration charts to find the direction of market in long term and shotrt term. So, if the long term chart is pointing upward, enter the trade when shorter term chart is also pointing upward.

To get more info, you can visit -

http://the-forex-trading.blogspot.com

You may want to look at Collective2:

http://www.collective2.com

People can subscribe to your system there and you have a number of ways you can charge. One advantage of using them is that you have an independent auditor of your results. Another is that they do all of the billing for you.

Unfortunately, not free.

But even if you decide not to use them, you can still get some idea of what other people are charging for their methods — while seeing what kinds of results they are generating for those charges.

P.S. I hope by "developing a trading strategy for the last 6 months", you don't mean you've been tweaking historical data to generate those results. There have been a few systems on Collective2 that looked great in their presentation of backtest results, but failed miserably going forward.

The big issue with premarket trading in my experience is that the spread is often times very large. There are exceptions to this, and this is when the stock is heavily traded in general (such as QQQQ or DIA) or that day (such as a stock that just came out with an earnings announcement). Thus, if the spread is low, after hours trading should ideally be no different than during the day.

Now, keep in mind that the premarket trading doesn't open where it left off the day before, but rather, where the current bid/ask prices are. Thus, if a stock closed yesterday at 10 bucks, came up with stellar earnings this morning at 7:30, you'd expect the initial bid/ask to be above 10 bucks (as everyone, not just you, got this news). Now, it is possible that the last trade for the stock this morning was lower than the pre-market bid/ask. But it is the current bid/ask price that matters and tells what you can get for it now. Thus, you wouldn't be able to pick it at 10 bucks pretrading. Now, it is possible that if you premarket trade and you get the stock early in the day, you can appreciate the continued rise during the day of that stock (although you probably could have done the same by just buying it at market open). However, the premarket trading could have also over-reacted (in particular, if the stock is very lightly traded). If the latter is the case, then you would have been better off just buying the stock at market open.

Bottom-line is that you should probably buy/sell stocks pre/after-market just as you would normally, keeping in mind everyone else has the news too. Further, you should be careful of large spreads with the after-hours trading, as it reduces possible gains. Hopefully this helps?

I have Vantage Point and look at the Short Term Predictive relative to the Medium Term Predictive.

First, you're using Vantage Point to day trade, but they will tell you that Vantage Point is for position trading. Yes, they're predicted high/low is very accurate (granted, major moves can be outside the range, but how often do you have a huge 1 day move?), but it only tells you the possible high/low, now what the trading pattern for the day will be.

One thing I could suggest is this: Use the Short Term/Medium Term Predictive averages (the pink and light blue lines, I have mine set on the bottom part of the chart) to get an idea of when prices could be changing direction. Also, when you switch from the 10 day or 5 day average to the predicted high/low, you'll notice that the short/medium predictive lines will be different that from the 10/5 day chart. What I do is when the short predictive (light blue) line crosses the medium (pink) line on both the 5/10 day and predicted high/low chart, is when I get an indication markets will turn (and it's very accurate).

When that happens, since you day trade, use your technicals on whatever time frame chart you're using to take trade only in the direction of the crossover. For example, say you're watching the S&P 500, the market is trending up and you notice that on the 5 or 10 day chart that the short term predictive has crossed below the medium term, and when you switch to the predicted high/low chart that the short has not crossed below the medium predictive, but is about to, wait till the short crosses below the medium predictive on the predicted high/low chart (that is short has crossed below medium on both 5/10 and predicted high/low chart). When that happens, use your technicals to time short entries, don't go long. In other words, say you're using a 5 minute chart. If the market is trending up, and you're technicals give you a signal for a short, then take the short trade.

When the signals show the 5 minute chart starting to turn back up again, close your short, but do not go long, only enter again when you get a sell signal.

Trade in the direction of the larger trend. You should get less whipsaws and will be trading in the direction of the larger trend. When the short crosses above the medium predictive on both the 5/10 and predicted high/low chart, the only take long trades.

Hope that helps.

SEC rules apply to broker/dealers, if you trade using a US Broker/dealer you are subject to the SEC rules and regulations.

All customers using US Broker/dealers would have to follow the rules that dictate policy & procedures to that broker/dealer.

If you going to play in the US, directly or indirectly, you have to play by the rules

I had one with manfinancial (used to be called refco canada)for longer than 30 days… about 1 year ago. I don't know if they still do.
You could always open a new demo account after the 30 days is over and you can continue doing this forever with some brokers.
I am using a great system to trade the forex market successfully with no guess work. A revolutionary software uses a hedging system that minimize your risks and loses.
If you would like to know more about this system, click on http://www.4xmoneytrain.com

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.

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!