Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Day Trading Training - What Makes The Pros So Good?

By Sam Lockwood

Day trading is an excellent way to make good money, but if you've heard it's easy or a form of passive income, you've heard wrong. You need to put some work into it.

Day trading commodities and stocks is more like a highly lucrative job. You need a number of firmly ingrained habits to be successful at it.

The first thing you'll absolutely need is a good sense of time. The kind of person who's not good in the mornings or needs that morning jolt from coffee will only make themselves miserable trying day trading. That's because the best time to decide how you'll be playing the market today is right before opening bell. That's at nine in the morning in New York and six in the morning in California. If you're living in Hawaii or Alaska, it's five am. Of course, just being an early riser isn't enough. You'll also need to have a good internal clock and a solid scheduling system.

Habit number two that you'll need is having a good set of skills for quantitative thinking. You'll make or lose money in day trading just by operating on gut instinct. Making informed decisions, on the other hand, requires you to be able to look at numbers and understand them completely without even thinking about it. This means that numeracy and the ability to deal with numbers in your head is vital if you're going to tell whether something's a blip or a trend, and deal with it correctly.

You should know that this doesn't require you to be a mathematician. Numbers you'll need to know can be learned, even if you always hated math. There are a few numerical skills you can learn to the point of them being ingrained, once you get going in the game.

Successful day traders also have to have patience and skills of observation, and combine them with a short memory. This can be pretty hard to learn, since you have to avoid feeling disappointment when you don't catch a stock at the top, or when you lose money because the short you're intending just never shows up. Don't get caught up in things when you lose, and don't allow winning to take over your life, either.

Dedicated research is habit number four. You won't have to consume accounting statements the way someone in long term conventional investing does, but you have to constantly be getting new data and analysis. You also have to be proactive about your buying and selling, and make fast, accurate judgments, then act on them just as quickly. The only way to make the correct decision is to have the right research. Just don't let it paralyze you.

You should also keep in mind the fact that much of this analysis isn't directly done by you. The best traders always keep lots of tools available, and can quickly access a number of different data and research services.

If you're thinking about getting into day trading, you'll also need to build up a support network. That requires dealing with a broker, as well as finding investors who will help you apply leverage to the market. You have to understand that this is work, and that this kind of work requires intelligence, focus, and a strong will.

If you believe you've got what's needed to be a day trader, it could be a great way to make a significant income. This is a job you can seriously call fun, if you have what it takes, and it could be pretty enriching, too. - 15224

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