Types of Traders

[emborios]

I am new to forex and every place i search about forex i constantly read about different types of traders such as scalpers or day traders and many others. Can someone please help me and give me information about these different types of traders and which is the best for a new user to follow?
Thank you very much

[IDR]

Scalper: Trade very fast, in seconds or minutes only. Targeting small pip gain per trade but does a lot of trades per day.

Swinger: Trade relative slower, several minutes to several days per trade. Targeting bigger pip gain.

Intraday: Completing roundturn trade in a single day, whether one or three rt-trades. New day always means new trades.

DayTrader: Trade takes minimum of a couple of days to complete, might be several days.

News/Fundamental Trader: Take signal to trade from news which affecting price.

Technical Trader: Using indicators such as moving averages, stochastic, etc. to trade.

Which one is the best? All of them! The phrase "Everyone for him/herself" can't be manifest better than in forex trading. You can make money, lots of it sometimes, using news or indicators, by scalping or swinging, in and out of trades in a single day or several days. There's always someone (or more than one) who makes a lot of money in every type of trades.

You shall look inside yourself, knowing yourself better than you do now, to know what type of trader you are. If you are basically a scalper, you can dream of taking position in trading and blow account after account until you accept yourself and start scalping, and vice versa.

[Simy]

IDR: I like your breakdown of the types of traders, I cant help to feel that somthing is missing but its escaping me at the moment!

emborios: The hardest part about learning forex is learning to trade for your syle and learning what style you would be best trading with. You wont know what type of trader you are untill you try diffrent things, and you cant trade untill you have learned quite a bit!

So heres my advice, learn the basic principals of trading on the technical side of things, then learn about the fundamental side of things, and try both, on a demo account for as long as you like, eventually you will be drawn to one type of style, learn as much as you can to satisfy yourself. The babypips school will help alot in learning but its not an end all be all thing it will allow you to trade, true, but it will not allow you to go out and open a live $100k account. You need experience and with that experience you will learn you need to learn more about XYZ, or learn new ways to apply what you know. So asking about styles at this point is pointless, but you will see what I mean after you have been trading sucessfully for a few months.


Heres my view on the styles though, a scalper should be able to take their skill to any time frame but is generrally happier knowing sooner if he/she is right or wrong.

A swing trader is generally very patient and will wait untill proper opertunity arrises based on pervious experience, and will holdon to winning positions while keeping an eye on their trade. They are likley to wait quite a bit before they see any real sign of a right or wrong trade. (if there is such a thing)

an intraday trader is more likley to look for the daily moves, if memory serves correcly you can generally pull 60+ pips from the EUR/USD on a daily basis if your correct on the direction. They look for signals of where the pair is likley to go, and wait to jump on the band wagon, they are like swing traders with smaller time frames, usually completing trades in a day.

A day trader is like an intraday trader except they may also hold on to good trades for awhile.

The problem with all these distinctions is they are all blury, for examply I know of several Day traders who swing trade, and scalp. Some will swing with the longterm swings (the classic definition i believe) and will also scalp smaller swings (or instead may intraday trade, etc...)

Good luck and happy pipping!

[emborios]

thank you guys just one more thing, which platform would you recommend for which trader? all the platforms seem to cater to different types of traders.

[Simy]

I think the real question is what kind of broker, charting is easy, not all brokers for example allow you to scalp, lower spread means intraday traders wont take such a hit (same for scalpers actually) swing traders and daytraders are probibly not as concerned with it -- but its still a factor.

This subject can best be researched if and when you need it to be, my advice is right now just stick to learning how to trade, then what kind of trades you will do and then find a platform and broker that works for you.

[Andrewunknown]

Originally Posted by emborios

I am new to forex and every place i search about forex i constantly read about different types of traders such as scalpers or day traders and many others. Can someone please help me and give me information about these different types of traders and which is the best for a new user to follow?
Thank you very much

Despite how much others talk about it, try not to concern yourself with this. It is true that most traders develop a profile along the lines of one of the above; but as Simy said, many end up blurring these neat definitions anyway: that is because how you trade dictates what "type of trader" you become, not the other way around. Concern yourself with education about the market and deriving real experience from a demo account, and the length of time you leave a trade on or what you use to make trading decisions will take care of itself.

And there is no difference between an "intraday trader" and a "day trader" - they're redundant terms. In fact, "intraday" is almost always used in the context of discussing price action within a market session, not the interval, duration or point of liquidation for one's trades: that's where the designation "day trader" comes into play. This type of trader, almost without exception, flattens their positions by the end of a market session (or in the case of Forex, once a 24 hour period has elapsed) by definition and as a rule.

[mtandk0614]

If I may offer my personal experiance.

It took me just over a month of trading everyday to figure out what I liked better. I took a trading plan that can be used for any time frame and I used it on every time frame.

I would apply the system to one pair, in my case it was EUR/USD. I then traded the same plan on different chart sizes. Daily, 4H, 1H, 15M, 1M.

I always thought I wanted to scalp the market, I was happy ending every trading day w/ +5 pips (not too hard one would think). Well, even though I was hitting my goal, I was not happy with the way it felt...watching the 1M chart...jumping up and down as the trade went against me...was hard on the nerves. I didnt like the Daily trading due to the fact that it gave very few signals even though the rewards were HUGE. I am happier using the 4H and 15M charts, I use the 4H for my longer term trading and I jump in the 15M charts when I feel like I want to take a little more control over the account. But the important thing was that I was using the same system for all time frames.

Doing this helped me a ton....just an idea for you

Happy Hunting

[gasanvill]

well, personally i´ve been demo trading for a couple of months, and i like the smaller time frames, but i believe that it doesnt matter what timeframe you use, its all about your money managment. Money managment is the same for a 15m chart or for a daily chart.
Another aspects to consider is how much time do you have to sit in front of you computer and trade? How you control your emotions?
So you have to decide what kind of trader you want to be based on your lifestyle and your preferences..

[emborios]

well lets say i was a day trader. what would i expect from the platform and which platform would you recommend to me?

[Simy]

again I think your asking the wrong question. what platform you need also depends on what you use to trade, do you need custom indicators/signals, do you want the ability to program your platform as you(or some programmer) sees fit? or do you just want moving averages and RSI or somthing similar?

Find what you use for your trades and find a platform that supports it by a broker who you agree with (eg make sure their rules dont go against your trading style, and that you agree with the way they do buisness, etc... -- do your homework)

if you cant find a broker that uses a platform you like with rules you agree with you can use a sepperate chart, and broker -- this is getting more and more common. For exmaple for trading I use Oanda, I may in the future decide to use a metatrader chart, if so I'll still trade with Oanda but decide what and how to trade based on metatrader. (ok not metatrader, I dont like it, this is jsut an example)