What do day traders look like?
Day traders are defined as traders who place at least one or two trades on average daily.These trades are also to be closed before the end of the trading day to avoid attracting overnight charges like swap and rollover.Brokerage fee for day traders where they apply can be substantially lower than fees for other types of traders.While margins for most traders are usually around 1% of the value in traders account,day traders can face level as low as 0.25%.This means that a trader can trade say $10000 worth of currencies from an account of only $100 with a high leverage of 1:100,which is 1% margin.Also, given 1:400 leverage, the same $10000 can be controlled with a slow as $25 which is 0.25% margin.Sometimes,we even have $10 exposure particularly when trading the Yen on micro lot contract.
Tips for Surviving And Thriving as a Day Trader
Active traders must agree with me that day trading is not easy,particularly when your sustenance is based on what you make from trading currencies or any other commodity online.The battle for survival gets tougher by the day with increasing market volatility and deepening global financial crises.But there is a way out for those who heed good advice.
The five common strategies adopted by traders who seek to make and multiply profits are as follows:
Trend Following : This strategy is used by most trading firms and individuals.It is assume that currencies and securities that have been rising steadily will continue to rise.They the seek to enter the market on what Fibonacci Traders call Retracements or pull backs/corrections.When a trader who is a trend follower discovers or realizes the market trend is up,he only waits for the price to correct or come down significantly and the joins the secondary trend before it resume sits upward movement.Trend traders assume there are three types of trend in any market; the primary or major trend, Secondary trend and the Minor or counter Trend. The Primary Trend is the major trend of the day ,week or month depending on which time frame a trader chooses to trade from and what he considers the big picture of the market,while the secondary trend is the resumption of the main trend after the market has ended its retracement or pull-back.The minor trend is movement in a direction that negates the main and secondary trends.If the major tren is up then falling prices become a minor trend and most times do not last as long as the primary trend.Quite often we may see the primary trend retracing as much as 50% to 61.8% of the previous movement of the main trend befor the correction ends.You could develop this strategy with proper education and practice using the right trading tools.You may need he following tools; Fibonacci Retracements,Trend lines ,Average Directional movement Index etc.
Playing News : This strategy is to buy or sell a currency or security of a country which has just announced good news for the economy.An example is what happened during the third week of February 2009.President Obama's fiscal Stimulus bill had just been approved by the congress.The news of this event made waves during the weekend that gave birth to the third week and the week witnessed the US dollar recording multiple week highs against all the major currencies around the world for three consecutive days.It was noted that the markets simply moved against all technical forecast because of the information coupled with the other fundamental news that where not favorable to the pounds sterling or the Euro .One great strategy you can learn to profitably apply to your trades when trading news is Straddling.
Range Trading: With this strategy a trader seeks to buy when the market ranges into the over sold area at a support level and sells in the range again when the market has ranged into an overbought area at a Resistance level.Hedgers also use this when they are not sure what the market is up to.Sometimes this range movement may make up to 50-70pips range and can be used to build great portfolio.Pivot point analysis and Oscillator like stochastic Oscillator might be useful here.
Scalping: This is commonly defined as a very quick trade.A scalper may simply operate on either the 1 minute,5min or 15minutes time frame,taking only about 5pips to 10pips per trade and enter into as many as 50 trades per trading day.The use of multiple and large lot sizes can make this strategy very rewarding as well as very risky.You may consider integrating it into your trading plan and thrive as a day trader.
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