Day Trading - Getting Ahead Early

When you turn on your computer in preparation for the trading day, the one and only thing you should care about is finishing up on the day. I personally do not subscribe to the idea of only trade the charts and everything will take care of themselves. You have to make a conscious decision of whether you want to finish up or down for the day. You are the only person that controls if this becomes a thought or a reality.

10-Run Rule
My mom recently sent me an article from my high school baseball games from my senior year when we won our conference championship. In the clipping it described how we ran through our division dishing out 3 10-run rule spankings. I thought to myself, every day trader needs a 10 run rule. This 10-run rule is the point you set per day that tells you that the game is over. If you do not know your 10-run rule, a ugly day will turn into a debacle and you are not ready to trade on a professional level.

Take the first pitch
My coach Paul Bernstorf would tell me to work my count. Don't just go out there hacking at every pitch. In day trading, one needs to exercise this same sort of patience. Depending on how actively you trade the market, you will be presented with more than enough trading opportunities. So, take the first pitch, wait to see how the market is trading and how well your system is fairing in the current market environment.

Swing for singles
Whenever you start trading, the first thing you want to do is swing for small gains. Depending on your investment style and timeframe, you need to decide what small gains means to you. For me it is anywhere between .5% and 1.5%. My goal is for every $10,000 I use per trade, to get a minimum of $250 dollars in the bank before 2pm. From this point on I will not risk more than .75% per trade, thus allowing me to make three blunders and still walk away a winner for the day.

Swing for the fences
Once I have my $250 per $10,000 invested safely in the bank, I can now swing for the fences. This does not mean that I let my stops go, but rather when I'm in a winning trade, I look for larger price targets and are willing to give back more of my gains. The power of this is that I'm now allowing my gains from earlier in the day to compound while still ensuring I walk away a winner.

Final Box Score
Day traders make the mistake of always looking to hit the big one, or rather putting on too many trades in one day. Because you are day trading does not mean you can just toss aside common sense rules of how to make money. If you are down $100 dollars and you are in a trade that's up $210, take the money. Get in the black for the day. The worst thing you can do is to not get ahead. What will happen over the course of a month is losing days will make up 20% of the days, winning days 60%, and homerun days another 20%.

Al Hill is the co-founder of mysmp.com (My Stock Market Power) which provides education on all topics finance; including stocks, bonds, options, futures, forex, technical analysis, and more! Please visit http://www.mysmp.com for more free financial educational content.

AP - H&R Block Inc. is bracing for what could be a make-or-break final stretch of this year's income tax season.

Free Online Penny Stock Trading
Stock Market Trading Analysis
Online Stock Trading Ratings
Online Stock Trading In Canada
Online Stocks

Day Trading - Trade, Don't Gamble

There is one thing in common among winners and losers in any gambling game- they will continue to gamble regardless of what happens. And what are the commonalities between gambling and day trading? Simple, there are losers and winners, most of them are gamblers.

Despite the fact that gambling and trading are two very different things; many traders seem to behave as gamblers instead of day traders. In gambling the winner would like to believe that he has an unstoppable streak of good luck and will try to ride his momentum until he gives all his winnings back to the casino. The loser, on the other hand, will try to get out of their bad luck by risking all his money in belief that he will be able to win back all the money he's lost. In trading unsuccessful traders work in this manner.

True trading is not like gambling though. Unfortunately, most traders who have not reached maturity tend to act in this manner and over trade for the same objective as a gambler.

Theoretically, day traders should be able to get over the practices of a gambler. He must try to evolve from this point until he becomes a strategist. This can only be achieved though through developing the necessary skills, the discriminatory attitude and the realization that the market moves in a certain way and this way should be discovered.

There are no secrets to day trading though. Everyone should realize that the behavior of the market is a bit predictable by using indicators and patterns which have existed before. Everyone should also recognize the truth that the market works in a psychological way and one must only develop keenness to this reality. Also, everyone should acknowledge that skills take time to develop and once they start to build-up, the trader will also start to become more efficient in the trade.

Over-trading does not work in this business. Those who practice this technique either have no sufficient knowledge in this field or have not out grown the common attitudes of the amateurs which depend highly on their priorities.

The most common reasons why amateurs over trade are a) they trade to confirm that they are good and that their system works, b) they are stretching their limits to prove that they can make profits whenever possible, c) they try to get off with the emotional burden especially when they are losing their trade by selling or re-entering the market if the signs are good enough for them, and d) just like the gambler they only want to take advantage of their luck to win back their losses.

Miodrag Trajkovic is an expert on information related to Day Trading, Day Trading Mistakes, Day Trading Strategies, Online Day Trading and Day Trading Systems. For more information visit his website http://daytrading.explore-me.com

Reuters - The Obama administration on Wednesday launched a $75 billion foreclosure relief plan, as new data showed one in five U.S. homeowners with mortgages owe more than their house is worth.

Day Trades
Online Stock Trading
Free Stock Trade Software
Free Mock Stock Trading
Get Rich Trading Stocks