Is Daytrading difficult or impossible ?

shatteredx said:
Yeah, not necessarily audited, just returns that someone else has verified.



Haha, afraid not. I'm a novice futures swing trader with a small account. I can barely fund myself.

I guess nearly all of the successful traders with 10+year records I'm aware of have been swing traders.

Rentech and Virtu have daytrading algos so I guess they are good examples of profitable daytrading (robots).

That story of the Japanese day trader is great. I wonder if he was profitable in 2016?

I'm just interested in hearing real stories about real traders. I see a lot daytraders claiming to be profitable. I just want to see some real proof. Maybe just 5 years of verified performance? Haha.
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Most successful traders, trade time frames suitable to their personalities. Skill required for day trading while translatable, is different than swing trading eg quick decision making, pattern recognition etc.. If you are a trader with no patience you'll drive yourself bonkers and perhaps into bankruptcy trying to swing.
 
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dealmaker said:
If you are a trader with no patience you'll drive yourself bonkers and perhaps into bankruptcy trying to swing.
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Isn't that what alerts are for? Swing traders are usually watching a dozen instruments which keeps them fairly busy.
 
dealmaker said:
Most successful traders, trade time frames suitable to their personalities

Skill required for day trading while translatable, is different than swing trading eg quick decision making, pattern recognition etc..
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Those are vital, indeed....quick decision making, but also calm and thoughtful pattern recognition.
You need to sense around where those support/resistance levels will be at. And be prepared to be wrong, or adjust to the market's mood or personality.
Day trading, or timing the market's daily movement, is extremely tough...I mainly think of these two rare successful Japanese traders CIS and BNF.

You have economic reports consideration, previous close price, premarket activity, Asia and Europe's performance, all intertwined in a big ass shit cocktail to consider where those support/resistance levels will be or play out at.

"In a typical six-month period more than 80 percent of day traders lost money, and only 1 percent of them could be called predictably profitable."
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/active-trading/053115/average-rate-return-day-traders.asp

Day trading is tough, but not impossible.
You definitely need the right skill set, and personality and traits for it...I kind of like to think of Neo in The Matrix 1999 movie.
Excellent movie, by the way -- everyone should watch it o_O Only the first/original Matrix is epic, the rest are blah.
 
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dealmaker said:
No. An impatient person will not have the patience to wait on an alert.
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An impatient person is busy with a dozen other instruments, some of which positions are held, is browsing the web, doing research, posting in forums, chatting, eating meals, having a coffee, watching a news source etc while waiting for that next alert.
 
lovethetrade said:
An impatient person is busy with a dozen other instruments, some of which positions are held, is browsing the web, doing research, posting in forums, chatting, eating meals, having a coffee, watching a news source etc while waiting for that next alert.
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A successful trader is driven by process and thus have simplified things ( KISS) and has plenty of time regardless of being a day, swing or position trader. What you are describing screams, new trader.
 
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dealmaker said:
Most successful traders, trade time frames suitable to their personalities. Skill required for day trading while translatable, is different than swing trading eg quick decision making, pattern recognition etc.. If you are a trader with no patience you'll drive yourself bonkers and perhaps into bankruptcy trying to swing.
More...

Most of the swing traders I've met...they put a little more emphasis on economic issues, political issues, market tendencies, FED/IMF/ECB decisions. Day traders in comparison...tend to use such less than the swing traders.

There's also that psychology side of things. Day traders tend to put more emphasis on the psychological (mental game) than swing traders.

In fact, I've seen swing traders here at ET say the reason why they're swing trading was because they weren't good with the mental game of day trading even though they were using the same trade strategy.
 
wrbtrader said:
In fact, I've seen swing traders here at ET way the reason why they're swing trading was because they weren't good with the mental game of day trading

Many swing traders emerged from day trading. I switched because I simply make a lot more $ as a swing although I put on a pure day trade every so often when the setup is right. A good swing trader has to be a good day trader to even get a trade off the ground since most of us don't take losers overnight. Us swing traders of futures & Fx are handling multiple positions (domestic & foreign) traded around the clock - often with a lot more capital to manage (many day traders lack the capital for going overnight). A seasoned winning trader of any discipline (DOM/arb/spread/options/trend/day/etc) has to have a great mental game. Most of your market wizards are swing traders - and they wrote the book on the mental game.
 
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comagnum said:
wrbtrader said:
In fact, I've seen swing traders here at ET way the reason why they're swing trading was because they weren't good with the mental game of day trading

Many swing traders emerged from day trading. I switched because I simply make a lot more $ as a swing although I put on a pure day trade every so often when the setup is right. A good swing trader has to be a good day trader to even get a trade off the ground since most of us don't take losers overnight. Us swing traders of futures & Fx are handling multiple positions (domestic & foreign) traded around the clock - often with a lot more capital to manage (many day traders lack the capital for going overnight). A seasoned winning trader of any discipline (DOM/arb/spread/options/trend/day/etc) has to have a great mental game. Most of your market wizards are swing traders - and they wrote the book on the mental game.
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Thanks for the post because I didn't think about it until your post reminded me whom I first started learning about the mental aspects of day trading...I first learned it from a swing trader that was a former successful day trader.
 
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