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CHARACTERISTICS OF A DAY TRADER

This article will focus on professional day traders - that is, those who trade for a living, not simply as a hobby or for a "gambling high." These traders are typically well-established in the field and have in-depth knowledge of the marketplace. Here are some of the prerequisites to day trading:

Knowledge and Experience in the Marketplace: Individuals who attempt to day trade without an understanding of market fundamentals often end up losing money.

Sufficient Capital: One cannot expect to make money day trading. Day traders use only risk capital, which they can afford to lose. Not only does this protect them from financial ruin, but it also helps eliminate emotion from their trading. A large amount of capital is often necessary to capitalize effectively on intra-day price movements.

A Strategy: A trader needs an edge over the rest of the market. There are several different strategies that day traders utilize, including swing trading, arbitrage and trading news, among others. These strategies are refined until they produce consistent profits and effectively limit losses.

Discipline: A profitable strategy is useless without discipline. Many day traders end up losing a lot of money because they fail to make trades that meet their own criteria. As they say, "Plan the trade and trade the plan." Success is impossible without discipline.

Day Trading for a Living

There are two primary divisions of professional day traders: those who work alone and/or those who work for a larger institution. Most day traders who trade for a living work for a large institution. The fact is these people have access to things individual traders could only dream of: a direct line to a dealing desk, large amounts of capital and leverage, expensive analytical software and much more. These traders are typically the ones looking for easy profits that can be made from arbitrage opportunities and news events. The resources to which they have access allow them to capitalize on these less risky day trades before individual traders can react.

Individual traders often manage other people's money or simply trade with their own. Few of them have access to a dealing desk; however, they often have strong ties to a brokerage (due to the large amounts of commission spending) and access to other resources. However, the limited scope of these resources prevents them from competing directly with institutional day traders; instead, they are forced to take more risks. Individual traders typically day trade using technical analysis and swing trades - combined with some leverage - to generate adequate profits on such small price movements in highly liquid stocks.

Trading

Day trading demands access to some of the most complex financial services and instruments in the marketplace. Day traders require:

Access to the Trading Desk: This is usually reserved for traders working for larger institutions or those who manage large amounts of money. The dealing desk provides these traders with instantaneous order executions, which can become important, especially when sharp price movements occur. For example, when an acquisition is announced, day traders looking at merger arbitrage can get their orders in before the rest of the market, taking advantage of the price differential.

Multiple News Sources: In the movie "Wall Street" Gordon Gekko says that "information is the most important commodity when trading." News provides the majority of opportunities day traders capitalize on, so it is imperative to be the first to know when something big happens. The typical trading room contains access to the Dow Jones Newswire, televisions showing CNBC and other news agencies, as well as software that constantly analyzes various other news sources for important stories.