Thirty years ago when I first started, I was lucky, very lucky, commissions were so high, you could not day trade, so each Saturday would find me at main library copying down from microfilm old copies of Wall Street Journal so I could then go home and make my own price charts by hand. Took me several Saturdays to be able to get three years worth of data to do those charts, and I started to learn how to chart, learning about price action. I have all night to think whether to place a trade the next morning for a long term trade. I found I could risk a little and look to make 12 to 30 times what I had to risk.
Not much has changed as far as risk to reward for long term trading except brokerage has big time going from $125 per hundred to 26 cents and speed. Trading long term commodities is also very very good risk to reward.
But day trading is not good for the average Joe, Commissions are huge for retail trader, risk to reward is lousy. If you do ten trades a day, the risk is generally more than your profits and that is if you a profitable day trader which most are not. Most are unbelievable undercapitalized, under educated of price action, dream of grandeur, don't have a clue about the years of dedication required to get good enough to become a Breakeven trader. then more years to learn the nuances of trading.
Day trading will bring out every lousy emotion that is within you.
After spending thousands of hours and having more losing trades, you might rub Budda's stomach in the morning, wear your lucky socks, put on your underwear backwards just cause yesterday you made 13 bucks, but that is not going to bring you to the promise land.
You have to spend a couple years of screen time, have a well backtested set of ideas, preferable a mentor who will not charge you for the experience, and learn patience. The patience to wait, the patience to accept.
Price is really not what you think you see when you look at your screen, they are people's ideas and many traders who are emotional staring at other people's emotions are most likely to lose. Markets that trend hard in one direction are traders getting in to enter, traders getting out to exit, and traders reversing so as not to miss the move. You first get "fear of maybe it will work and maybe it won't," then fear of "oh crap I got to get out of my losing position," then there is "I better reverse so I don't miss the move." We have all been there.
If it wasn't for my long term commodity trading doing well, I would have not given so many years to figure out how to day trade. Long term you have to accept losing more trades than winning trades, but cause of the higher reward to risk, acceptable way of trading, so even at 35% winning trades, you can have nice years of return, but in day trading you really need max 25% or less of losing trades cause the reward to risk is much less and high retail commissions.
And for those who say they don't have much money for longer term, after spending a couple thousand hours studying price, two years of screen time, going thru half dozen of accounts and have nothing to show for it, whereas long term you might have made 30% return and have worked and saved money while you continue to study in free time. What am I saying, I shouldn't be saying this, I need fresh meat to lose their money, YEAH day trading is a breeze, be out there on beach taking in the rays, Dude.