As Matthew Poll Day Trading will tell you, it’s not always luck that gets you the win, even when the going gets tough. It’s the strategies you implement.
Matthew Poll, (with a bit of education under his belt) realized in 2008 that he could make a “profit in an up market, but also in a down market. When we started, I finally had this awakening,” he said, “like, oh my gosh, you can make money, and this thing’s going down.”
The traditional way of trading, putting the money in, sitting on it, and waiting for it to go up, was suddenly way beyond the back burner. In its place? Day trading empowerment.
What comes first?
Practice:
Consider using a demo account to practice up on day trading. Some sources say that practicing for three months will greatly improve your success in day trading once you go live. Although it is natural for your demo account not to directly line up with live trading, (you may find you’re not doing as well as live as you did on the demo), you will be able to remember and put into practice what you studied.
Study up on Day Trading:
This includes news, economic calendars, and Federal interest rates that affect stocks, etc. You’ll need a trading platform, a broker to facilitate your trades, and the proper software and equipment to trade. Jumping right in might sound exciting, but knowing what you will be doing before doing it will greatly facilitate your earnings.
Take an Honest Look:
As soon as day trading opens in the morning, take an honest look at what is happening. Read the market. What do you like? What can you afford? Don’t make any moves for fifteen to twenty minutes. It will be difficult for you to recognize correct patterns in the beginning, but this won’t always be the case. Save the middle or late hours for the seasoned players.
“Remove yourself from [the] emotional response”:
The emotional response will “kill you. It’s that thing that’s going to have you do what everyone else is doing [when] you should be doing the opposite,” states Matthew Poll Day Trading. As you become more skilled at day trading, you will be able to see when you are making an emotional response in favor of sticking to the plan. How much are you willing to risk on a given day, for example? Stop trading when your cap is reached.
Finally, consider keeping a Day Trading Journal:
Because you don’t want to miss the action when it is happening, “take a screenshot of the trading day with some typed annotations on it,” at the end of the day, or day trading period, states thebalance.com.
“Save each day with the date as its file name, and keep them in a trading folder saved to an easily accessible location on your computer or in the cloud. Create subfolders for each year and month to make the files more easily searchable.”
On any given day, you can go back to your journal and see what worked for you (and what didn’t) to help you with future day trading.