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Thursday, January 1, 2009

Want To Become Day Trader? Here's The Key To Making Money

By Sam Lockwood

Day trading can be an excellent method for making a profit, if you have the stuff to do it. However, no matter how others may pitch it, it's not a smooth ride. You have to put a lot of work into it to succeed.

Day trading in commodities or stocks is, at base, a job. While it can be a highly lucrative job, it's also one that means you need some basic traits to succeed. You also need some specific habits, and they have to be so ingrained they're automatic.

The first thing you need is a great sense of time. Anyone who has trouble getting up first thing in the morning or needs to jumpstart with that first cup of coffee will only be miserable day trading. That's because the best time to figure out what you'll be doing on the market on a particular day is right before the opening bell. That happens at nine am in New York City - six am in California and five am in Hawaii and Alaska. You can't just be an early riser, though. You also have to have an excellent internal scheduling system and clock.

The second necessary habit is having good quantitative thinking skills. Working on hunches will allow you to make or lose money in day trading. You need to be able to read and understand the numbers without thinking about them if you want to make good decisions. You have to be able to convert and analyze the numbers in your head carefully, so you'll be able to tell if something is a blip or a lasting trend, and you have to be able to act accordingly.

I should point out that you don't have to be a mathematician to do this. You can learn how to analyze the numbers correctly, even if you're not fond of math. There are quite a few numerical skills that can turn into second nature, as long as you get well into the game.

Successful day traders also have to have patience and skills of observation, and combine them with a short memory. This can be pretty hard to learn, since you have to avoid feeling disappointment when you don't catch a stock at the top, or when you lose money because the short you're intending just never shows up. Don't get caught up in things when you lose, and don't allow winning to take over your life, either.

Dedicated research is also a must. Day trading doesn't require you to devour accounting statements like long term investing usually does, but you do need to constantly be able to deal with the flow of data and make analyses. You also have to be proactive about shares that you're buying or selling, and make snap judgments that you act on fast. The only way you'll know these judgments are the right ones are through the right research. However, don't let this desire for good research paralyze you.

You should also keep in mind the fact that much of this analysis isn't directly done by you. The best traders always keep lots of tools available, and can quickly access a number of different data and research services.

If you're interested in starting in day trading as a career, you'll have to get the right support, too. You need a good broker, and some other investors who are willing to help you use leverage on the market. Remember that what you're doing is work, and that you need to have focus and a strong will, as well as being smart, to make it work.

If you believe that you have all these skills, day trading offers an exciting and fascinating way to make a huge income. It's a job you can honestly consider fun, and if you have what it takes, it'll be pretty enriching, too.

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