Day Trading

Day trading refers to the practice of buying and selling financial instruments within the same trading day such that all positions are usually closed before the market close for the trading day.

I’ve been day trading stocks in a consistent basis for the past couple of weeks on TD Ameritrade. Needless to say, it’s a very dangerous and thrilling activity. I’ve made a lot of (expensive) mistakes so far – as expected – but this has only pushed me to educate myself thoroughly on the subject.

I’m going through 3 books – n00bish books, admittedly – that range from the psychology of trading to more extensive technical analysis details:

• Technical Analysis for Dummies by Barbara Rockefeller
• A Beginner’s Guide to Day Trading Online by Toni Turner
• The Ultimate Guide to Trading ETFs by Don Dion and Carolyn Dion

I’m particularly fond on Turner’s book. It explores the mindset and psychology of the market – why price action occurs, breakdowns, breakthroughs and how a day trader can benefit from this. It also goes through a rather lacking area of mine: Discipline.

Progress has been made on the technical analysis area. This is how my ThinkOrSwim screen looked like 2 weeks ago:

And this is how it looks now: