Quote from cabletrader:
Perhaps you're right but I don't understand how you arrive at that conclusion, please explain.
Admittedly my overhead is higher because of the volume of trades I make but it's all relative.
As an intraday short term trader (scalper)....
My trade size can afford to be larger because stops are tighter.
It usually takes less than an hour to see if a trade is right or wrong, sometimes minutes.
In the time it takes a longer term trader to find a trade set-up and wait for the trade to play out I will have executed perhaps hundereds of trades for between 5 and 10 pips each.
If the longer term trader's trade is wrong then taking into account the time it takes to find other trade set-ups to cover the loss, and make a profit, I could have executed literally hundreds if not thousands of trades.
There is more chance of fundamentals affecting market sentiment and therefore affecting a longer term trade, whereas I can avoid/exploit short term market reaction to scheduled data releases, changes to longer term market sentiment don't affect me as I don't have a longer term directional bias.
I don't have so much exposure to event risk, and I'm not exposed to the risk of weekend gaps.
I can adjust trade size on a trade by trade basis and therefore compound more aggressively.
My level of exposure is more flexible and can be adjusted according to the market, even on a minute by minute basis.
There are more opportunities to trade out of a losing trade.
There are more trading opportunities.
Overall I think shorter term trading is far more profitable than positional trading and unless there's a specific reason to trade longer term, ie time restrictions or liquidity issues, then intraday is by far the more lucrative way to trade.
I'm generalizing of course, there are some great positional traders and some lousy intraday traders, but on average....
First off, you'll never get the argument from me: It can't be done. It can be done and profitably, albeit at a bit more stress and time units per day (although this depends on the nature of the trader). To each his/her own
That said, aside from the issue of preference there is the real issue of commissions compounding aginst you. For every spread you pay per unit profit (what ever it is depending on your win ratio and the length of the trade), those pips are not pips that can go toward compounding--they are lost in this sense. Over time the equity curve of a long term trader and a short term trade at one point will start to diverge (assuming both are successful) and this divergence will get stronger as the short term traders is less able to get filled and the 'lost pips' add up even further
If you have a 10,000-50,000 USD account and your strategy allows you to lever up and catch the small moves, then yes, you will make more money in the first few years than a better capitalized, long term trader. But over time 5-10-20 years in the future, the long term trader will come out better in the compounding game, as he is able to get filled better at larger sizes (again less spread to pay due to less slippage) and spread/slippage paid is less per unit profit than with a short term strategy.
In short, once one's equity/capitial really starts to build it is necessary to look toward taking a longer term view. On the other hand, some traders are fine with a base 50,000 USD in their account taking smaller moves from the market.

