Short term trading, intraday trading, daytrading–call it what you will, these styles of trading bring some unique challenges. Tools and approaches that work in other timeframes also work intraday, but applying them requires a different mindset and attitude toward risk. For the next few weeks, my blog will be focusing on short term trading ideas, techniques, and challenges. In this podcast episode:
Definitions
- Daytrading
- Short-term trading
- Intraday
- Holding overnight
- Scalping
- Algos
Choose markets and timeframes
- Are some objectively better?
- Do you have special expertise? (Does this help or hurt?)
- Basic requirements: liquidity and movement
Possible markets
- Stock index futures
- Other futures
- Spreads
- Individual stocks
- Currencies
- Options
If you enjoy the podcast, one of the best things you can do for me is to leave me a review on iTunes here. The reality of the modern publishing world is that user reviews and comments help build audience faster than nearly anything else, and I thank you very much for your help!
Also, if you like the music for this podcast, then be sure to check out Brian Ashley Jones, my friend, and a fantastic singer-songwriter.
Enjoy the show:
Adam, thanks very much for devoting an entire section to day trading. Even if you haven’t done it regularly in a while, any advice from someone who has devoted a significant amount of time to it and has attained success is always an asset. You raise an interesting point about day-tradable products. I would personally argue that stocks and futures in particular have one plus going for them – they have levels that are easily defined and watchable: the open, close, high, and low of the actively traded sessions (esp. stock index futures). With currencies I find that the challenge is that it’s harder to define these levels, even the ‘close’ in currencies is up for debate. Also, the trading hours are a consideration, currencies in my view are optimal to trade during the European and NY-European overlap sessions, with a bulk of the opportunities coming in the European session. So if someone wants to day trade FX and they’re in a timezone that’s not friendly to trading the European session, opportunities can be pretty poor esp. when volatility dries up. My experience has also shown me that when times get high and dry volatility wise, the only pair that can offer any significant intra-day movement is the EUR/USD, which is a pretty difficult pair to trade because it backs and fills a lot.
Adam….glad to see you addressing this area of trading. I have been ‘daytrading’ since 2010….(mostly lost money for the first 18 months….won a little lost a little for the next 6 months…). It is not easy, but neither is it impossible…..but in my experience, daytrading does not trade like “swing trading” where one trades longer term positions. A lot of smaller ‘day trade’ charts contain a LOT of noise….and Price moves far too fast for what used to be known as “scalping” for a handful of ticks at a time. I do think a day trader can grab successful trades, but it needs a weird mix of patience (wait for price edges and for price to give you and edge)…..quick trade manipulation and flexibility to get in when the market is moving….and mental flexibility to recognize and quickly adapt if price starts doing something other than what you expect. Very interested to see how you address this.
Hi Adam, first of all thank you for generously providing all of this amazing content – your book, podcast and this blog! I have a quick question – how did you arrive at 2.25 as the multiplier for your EMA(20) Keltner Channel ATR? Did you conduct any kind of quantitative research to arrive at this figure?
cheers
Chris Sellers