DayTraderPro 101: Intro to Short-term Trading

The first thing to understand when it comes to short-term trading is that trading strategies supersede everything. The best stock trading tips in the world won’t amount to much if the trader doesn’t have a robust trading plan in place. DayTraderPro helps to provide you with all the tools necessary to master short-term trading and to have a successful day trading journey.

If you want long-term success then understanding the fundamentals of short-term trading is crucial. One significant difference between long-term trading fundamentals and short-term trading fundamentals is that short-term trading does not require you to focus on investment tips. In short-term trading, the day trader isn’t making an investment that needs to focus on company financials. A day trader is only interested in what a stock does within the day he or she is trading it, not how it will do months and years later. The day trader’s fundamentals consist of learning to read charts, investigating patterns and protecting themselves from extreme volatility through the use of indicators.

Minimizing Risk

Day trading is risky, but savvy traders soon learn to minimize risk by using sell stops and buy stops. A sell stop allows you to sell the security once it hits a predetermined price. At that point, it becomes a sell order at market price. The opposite is the buy stop. You can set a buy stop for at a certain, and when it is achieved, it turns into a buy order. By using these techniques, you now have more control over how much you might lose in any transaction.

Evaluating and Studying Stocks and Markets with Technical Analysis

Patterns

Technical analysis involves recognizing patterns in the market cycle and buying and selling based on these patterns. Traders use chart patterns to make decisions, but while chart patterns are useful, they are not infallible. Some of the better- known chart patterns include:

• Head and shoulders – this pattern points out that a trend reversal is possible.
• Triangle – consisting of several types these patterns show potential breakouts and breakdowns of a stock.
• Wedges – this pattern suggests bullishness when decreasing and bearishness when increasing.
  Indicators

Evaluating short-term stock recommendations requires a firm grasp of technical analysis. This involves the use of indicators, including:

• Moving averages – a stock’s average closing price over a particular period
• Oscillators – these indicators show upward and downward flow. The most used include stochastic, the Relative Speed Index (RSI) and the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD).
• Volume – these indicators measure a price trend’s strength using price data in conjunction with volume.

There are many, more esoteric indicators available. A day trader should experiment and see which best suit his or her individual trading style. While indicators are invaluable for market evaluation, it doesn’t make sense to use more than a few of them when trading. This is because useful indicators should always send you in similar directions when trading.

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