Sunday, January 11, 2009

Day Trading Advice From The Pros! Their Secrets Revealed!

By Sam Lockwood

Day trading can be an amazing way to make good money, or an amazingly stressful occupation. No matter what some may say, it's not an easy ride. You have to put some serious work into it.

Day trading in commodities or stocks is, at base, a job. While it can be a highly lucrative job, it's also one that means you need some basic traits to succeed. You also need some specific habits, and they have to be so ingrained they're automatic.

Habit number one is having a good sense of time. Anyone who can't get out of bed first thing in the morning or has trouble thinking before that cup of coffee is someone who will only be made miserable by day trading. The best time to assess the way you should play the market today is right before the opening bell. That's at nine in the morning in New York Cit, or six am in California and five am in Alaska and Hawaii. You can't just be an early riser. You also have to have a great internal clock and a good scheduling system.

Habit number two is maintaining a good set of quantitative thinking skills. You can make or lose money if you're just running off your basic hunches, but to really do well, you have to make informed choices. That means reading, understanding, and dealing with numbers without thinking about them consciously. You'll need to be numerate and be able to manipulate numbers in your head with enough skill to tell if you're looking at a blip or a trend, then act accordingly.

I should point out that you don't have to be a mathematician to do this. You can learn how to analyze the numbers correctly, even if you're not fond of math. There are quite a few numerical skills that can turn into second nature, as long as you get well into the game.

Habit number three is maintaining good observational skills, being incredibly patient, and learning to forget. This can be pretty hard, since you have to keep yourself from feeling let down when you don't catch a stock at its top, or when you lose money on a short sale that never turns up. Don't get caught up in either your wins or your losses, or you'll lose focus and money.

Habit number four is dedicated research. Day trading won't require going through accounting statements to the degree that conventional long term investing does, you do still need to have a constant inflow of analysis and data. You also have to be proactive about the shares you buy and sell. That means making quick, accurate judgments and acting fast. The only way to make the correct judgment calls is researching properly. However, you shouldn't let the need for research paralyze you.

Remember that you don't actually have to analyze most of this data or do most of this research. That's because the best traders have access to plenty of tools, including a number of different data services and research tools.

If you're interested in starting in day trading as a career, you'll have to get the right support, too. You need a good broker, and some other investors who are willing to help you use leverage on the market. Remember that what you're doing is work, and that you need to have focus and a strong will, as well as being smart, to make it work.

If you believe that you have all these skills, day trading offers an exciting and fascinating way to make a huge income. It's a job you can honestly consider fun, and if you have what it takes, it'll be pretty enriching, too.

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