Important legal information about the email you will be sending. By using this service, you agree to input your real email address and only send it to people you know. It is a violation of law in some jurisdictions to falsely identify yourself in an email. All information you provide will be used by Fidelity solely for the purpose of sending the email on your behalf. The subject line of the email you send will be "Fidelity. Day trading involves buying and selling a stock, ETF or other financial instrument within the same day and closing the position before the end of the trading day.

Years ago, day trading was primarily the province of professional traders at banks or investment firms. With the advent of electronic trading, day trading has become increasingly popular with individual investors.

While day trading can be profitable, it is risky, time-consuming, and stressful. The majority of non-professional traders who attempt to day trade are not successful over the long term. Success requires dedication, discipline, and strict money management controls. Day traders use a variety of strategies.

Most common strategies are simply time-compressed versions of traditional technical trading strategies, such as trend following, range trading, and reversals. In recent years, trading technology has evolved to the point where some individual day traders may place dozens or even hundreds of trades per day in an attempt to capture a large number of small profits, through techniques such as scalping or rebate trading.

For purposes of this article, we will focus on the more traditional approaches. In the parlance of day trading, a breakout occurs when a stock or ETF has surged above a significant area of price resistance. The breakout could occur above a consolidation point or above a downtrend line. A breakout can also occur on the downside. In that case, the instrument falls below a significant area of support, which can be either a consolidation point or below an uptrend line.

If the breakout occurred on a surge of volume, the odds are better that the breakout will remain intact and price will not fall below the previously broken resistance area.

A number of factors can come into play in making that decision, including: One of the chief tenets of technical analysis is that a prior area of resistance becomes the new level of support after the resistance is broken. Thus, in the case where a breakout is not supported strongly by the factors described above, a time-honored strategy is to place a buy order just above the breakout point and place a stop-loss just below the broken resistance line.

The idea is that price will retreat, confirm the new support level, and then move higher again. A pullback entry is based on the concept of finding a stock or ETF that has a clearly established trend, and then waiting for the first retracement pullback down to support of either its primary uptrend line or moving average to get into the market. For day trading purposes, a trader may identify a stock or ETF that has shown a good deal of upside strength in past several trading days.

The idea is then to jump into the market after the market retreats to a support level. Otherwise, you risk entering the trade too early. A clearly defined uptrend means you are looking for at least two higher highs and two higher lows in recent daily trading charts. A clearly defined downtrend would be two lower lows and two lower highs. A key point to remember here is the basic rule of trend trading: If a stock or ETF has been steadily tending higher for several weeks, the odds are much greater that it will continue higher as opposed to a market that has been trending higher for only a few days.

While that reaction is completely understandable, it is often wrong. Thus, there is typically a good deal of buying interest at support areas in any clearly defined trend. Many day traders trade on margin that is provided to them by their brokerage firm. Margin is essentially a loan to the investor and it is the decision of the broker whether to provide margin to any individual investor. If the investor fails to replenish the account, he or she will be forced to trade on a cash-available basis for the next 90 days and may be restricted from day trading.

Margin trading entails greater risk, including but not limited to risk of loss and incurrence of margin interest debt, and is not suitable for all investors.

Please assess your financial circumstances and risk tolerance prior to trading on margin. Swing trading refers to the practice of trying to profit from market swings of a minimum of one day and as long as several weeks.

Psychological challenges of trading. Successful professional traders know that their greatest enemy is in their own minds.

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The emotions of fear and greed are more powerful than any market forces in creating losses. Active Trader Pro Tools.

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Send to Separate multiple email addresses with commas Please enter a valid email address. Your email address Please enter a valid email address. Strategies and risks WILEY GLOBAL FINANCE Advanced Trading. Article copyright by Deron Wagner. The statements and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. This reprint and the materials delivered with it should not be construed as an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy shares of any funds mentioned in this reprint.

The data and analysis contained herein are provided "as is" and without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. Fidelity is not adopting, making a recommendation for or endorsing any trading or investment strategy or particular security. All opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice, and you should always obtain current information and perform due diligence before trading.

Consider that the provider may modify the methods it uses to evaluate investment opportunities from time to time, that model results may not impute or show the compounded adverse effect of transaction costs or management fees or reflect actual investment results, and that investment models are necessarily constructed with the benefit of hindsight.

For this and for many other reasons, model results are not a guarantee of future results. Please enter a valid e-mail address.

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Important legal information about the e-mail you will be sending. By using this service, you agree to input your real e-mail address and only send it to people you know. It is a violation of law in some jurisdictions to falsely identify yourself in an e-mail.

All information you provide will be used by Fidelity solely for the purpose of sending the e-mail on your behalf. The subject line of the e-mail you send will be "Fidelity. Your e-mail has been sent. Related Lessons Swing trading setups Swing trading refers to the practice of trying to profit from market swings of a minimum of one day and as long as several weeks. Psychological challenges of trading Successful professional traders know that their greatest enemy is in their own minds.

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