Day Trading or Position Trading?

Day Trading is the best.

I prefer taking short term positions. Maybe positions that last for few hours to just several days.

jobbing the market just doesnt seem to work. You tend to lose your discipline.

It all depends on yourself. If you force yourself to trade in a way you’re not comfortable with you won’t succeed.

If you prefer to get in and out and not linger around in the market then you should go for day trading. It’s a more interactive and potentially stressful time where you’d have to keep an eye on the charts regularly through the course of the trade.

If you don’t mind staying in trades over days to months then you would go position trading. Generally these are less stressful as you have time to analyse your place in the market and act on it. You wouldn’t need to constantly look at the charts every minute but at least once a day. If you’re going to lose sleep worrying about leaving positions open overnight though then you might need to reconsider. One other thing to consider for position traders is rollover/interest differentials - these can add up over time.

For myself I’m a position trader (for now). Currently I have 27 open positions running and usually have between 10-30 positions runnning at all times. Rollover is hitting me for around 0.2-0.3% of total capital per day so I have to overcome that cost each day to run a profit.

Hi TonyIommich, I read ur opinion and got in stuck because I want to be a scalper as I am and thinking to be a full time trader as I’ve just lost my job. after one month forex demo trading I placed my trade in real ac on Aug 17th 2012 and till now I have placed the total orders 159 orders (if I have lost my job at the first when i lost my job the numbers of orders might be goes in five figures) and out of 159 orders only 29 orders was in minus, rest I managed to close in positive points. And yeah The amount I STARTED WITH WAS ONLY $100.00 I’ve almost same amount in my ac (I did some foolish task in my initially trade such as i clicked on close order instead of clicking on change order to set stop loss and i lost $19.00 and $25 once as i have not enough money to hold the loss). I am hopping to get $200 and $100 i have already and will do trading :slight_smile:

AND PLS ADVISE ME THE BEST BROKER WHO TAKE SMALL COMMISSION CURRENTLY I PAY TOO HIGH :mad: I THINK

Hi there Tom,

First off, if you lost your job and you want to make a living trading full time, unless you have been at this game for several years, have enough risk capital (at least $50,000 you are willing to risk), and have a track record, I think its a recipe for disaster. Even if you’re doing well at the moment with a short term strategy, markets change and your hot streak can turn cold.

My advice, find some part time work, and find time to watch and trade the markets during the day time. Develop a solid methodology. If you like scalping, check out Bob Volman’s book Forex Price Action Scalping - that should give you plenty of ideas (you can use a 30 second chart instead of paying for the 70 tick, it does almost as well imho). Take exhaustive notes of your trading day, share your trades with others, etc. Read some Brett Steenbarger (he has a blog with lots of free articles) which will give you ideas on how to fine tune your performance and develop as a trader.

Prepare to easily put in several years before you can comfortably do this for a living. I also did extremely well in my first stab at trading. Then I realized life is not so simple. Some people have been lucky, e.g. they started trading when the market was ripping and roaring (e.g. 2008 financial crisis) and were able to do very well in a short amount of time (usually by leveraging like crazy). But once volatility and volume leave the market you end up with a totally different ball game, and more often than not that is how the market is. Take this August, for example. Very tough market to trade from both a technical and fundamental level. Fundamentals in my view should have seen the Euro break 1.20. Yet it got bid and chopped its way up to 1.31 despite the fact that a Greek exit was pretty much Wall St consensus. That’s markets for you.

I often like to read this post from this forum for inspiration: 301 Moved Permanently - an example of a guy who made it (you can tell because he never used this to become some guru, just made 2 posts and moved on).

As for brokers, if you are scalping you have to find someone with low commissions. I like Oanda because it lets me review my trades easily after I take them. They do EURUSD for about 1 pip. Some offer even less if you look carefully.

which broker are you trading with? have you compared brokers before opening your account?

I’m a position trader myself.

Both run incredible for me. taking more risk with day trading according to strategy and less risk on position trading.

Hey mate,

I trade all of the above. In trending markets I like position and swing trading because your returns are larger and frankly its less work. In volatile and range bound markets I day trade.

Position trading - doesn’t require a lot of capital and its the easiest way to learn to trade whilst making money. Likewise for swing trading. Swing and Position traders look at larger time frames (4 hr, Day, weekly) to see the overall trend in the market and use both fundamentals and technical analysis to support trade setups. It doesn’t require as much time commitment, is less stressful, and has less risk.

Day trading - requires more technical analysis whilst being aware of the fundamental events that are driving the technicals on the day. Day Traders generally make more trades than position and swing traders and thus take on more risk. There’s less room for error as a day trader.

As I said, I am not adverse to all methods of trading however I generally prefer Day and Swing trading over Position trading. Mostly because of my nature, I like analysing the market and I’ve found I make the most money that way.

N.B. A good trader isn’t the one who makes the most trades its the guy who holds on to his/her money. Oh and scalping is probably the hardest way to trade (not recommended for beginners) and will ultimately lead to over gearing and getting stopped out.

:wink:

That is what I’ve been saying all along, adjust your position size. Post #16.

Each one of us have a different threshold for patience. You can see my trades on a live account [U][B]here[/B][/U] and my Zulutrade SP account [B][U]FxTurtle[/U][/B]. You will noticed that my trades are infrequent.

i am happy yours and mine level of patience is more or less on the same level :wink:

Newbie question, but do you ever feel inclined to get out of a position before the market closes on Friday as a swing trader opposed to holding a position for say 2 weeks or a month (disregard interest) ? My greatest concern is that an event occurs and jacks the market up on a Saturday when I have no control over my trading platform. As always, my entry orders are set and don’t know if they would fill at the pricing I set if such an event occurred on a non trading day.

If you have a lot of capital then I advise you to start trading in position trade. Because it is a long term and need huge capital. You may earn a lot of money if you can trade in position. It also gives you a less pain. But if you have a poor capital then I will propose to u to invest in day trading. Its may give you pain but you may start to trade here easily with your small invest or capital.

Actually both are good but positional trading is good in that it brings lesser mental agony because you dont have to stare at the terminal whole day.

It been never long the profit get back with you got left your trading activities… Make sure you’re spontaneous with your trading business… :))))

spontaneity is not a characteristics of forex trading, are you kidding me?
careful calculations is what you need and protection for your accounts, good traders and market conditions :wink:

… if you also want to make sure that you end up being part of the industry’s losing statistics. :33:

“Spontaneous” suggests a lack of preparation, analysis, discipline and commonsense (probably more things as well) which ALL are essential to consistency in trading - so one could sum this up as “not a very good idea”.

However…if you mean without hesitation then perhaps you are somewhat correct. If one has confidence in one’s methods based on testing and usage then hesitation can lead to late entries which can lead to diminished profit or increased stop-loss. When you are ready, you pull the trigger, if you hesitate it can mean lack of trust in your system (go back to testing) or an unclear signal (leave it alone and wait for the next).

Day trading requires more screen time, as I don’t have this facility, which I find an advantage to me, I trade mostly on daily time frame in swing trading style.