Why day trading is so difficult?

Why day trading is so difficult?

Written by: PaxForex analytics dept - Tuesday, 26 January 2016 0 comments

Day trading is another short term trading style, but unlike scalping, you are typically only taking one trade a day and closing it out when the day is over. Day trading are suited for forex traders that have enough time throughout the day to analyze, execute and monitor a trade. If you think scalping is too fast but swing trading is a bit slow for your taste, then day trading might be for you.

A day trader is a trader who adheres to a trading style called day trading. This involves buying and subsequently selling financial instruments (e.g. stocks, options, futures, derivatives, currencies) within the same trading day, such that all positions will usually be closed before the market close of the trading day. Depending on one’s trading strategy, it may range from several to hundreds of orders a day.

A lot of people are drawn to forex trading because they see this as a means of earning a lot of money, and after an initial learning period, they start to trade off the short-term charts using one or two trading strategies that they may have picked up along the way. However the vast majority of these traders will quickly discover how hard it is to make consistent profits trading the 1-minute or 5-minute charts.

When day trading, trading time is compressed. Losses and wins come at you faster and more often which requires a mature, developed psychology to properly handle that kind of instantaneous feedback in such a short period of time. You must develop the psychology not to be seduced by the open market. Trading must remain emotionless and objective. Your day trading results can be highly impacted by trading at higher time frames and the shorter your time frame, the greater this effect will have on you.

The psychology of day trading requires you to not let a string of losses or wins that occur in a short period of time affect your mental state. A frail ego or mind will not do well in handling the results of immediate trade feedback in such a compressed amount of time. It will be too over whelming and may cause incredible frustration and a feeling of hopelessness. This is why position trading using daily charts is recommend for new traders because it allows them time to absorb trade feedback in a manner they can handle while they get a grasp of their trading results.