Day trading
But today, to reduce market risk, the settlement period is typically T+2 (two working days) and brokers usually require that funds be posted in advance of any trade.
[12] The next important step in facilitating day trading was the founding in 1971 of NASDAQ - a virtual stock exchange on which orders were transmitted electronically.
A persistent trend in one direction will result in a loss for the market maker, but the strategy is overall positive (otherwise they would exit the business).
Without any legal obligations, market makers were free to offer smaller spreads on electronic communication networks than on the NASDAQ.
After Black Monday (1987), the SEC adopted "Order Handling Rules" which required market makers to publish their best bid and ask on the NASDAQ.
The design of the system gave rise to arbitrage by a small group of traders known as the "SOES bandits", who made sizable profits buying and selling small orders to market makers by anticipating price moves before they were reflected in the published inside bid/ask prices.
Many naive investors with little market experience made huge profits buying these stocks in the morning and selling them in the afternoon, at 400% margin rates.
An unprecedented amount of personal investing occurred during the boom and stories of people quitting their jobs to day trade were common.
[15] In March 2000, this bubble burst, and many less-experienced day traders began to lose money as fast, or faster, than they had made during the buying frenzy.
The NASDAQ crashed from 5000 back to 1200; many of the less-experienced traders went broke, although obviously it was possible to have made a fortune during that time by short selling or playing on volatility.
Most of these firms were based in the UK and later in less restrictive jurisdictions, this was in part due to the regulations in the US prohibiting this type of over-the-counter trading.
These firms typically provide trading on margin allowing day traders to take large position with relatively small capital, but with the associated increase in risk.
[20][21][22] A 2019 research paper analyzed the performance of individual day traders in the Brazilian equity futures market.
Some of these restrictions (in particular the uptick rule) don't apply to trades of stocks that are actually shares of an exchange-traded fund (ETF).
Swing trading is a strategy aimed at gaining profit from stock price fluctuations over a period of several days to weeks.
Swing traders utilize technical analysis to identify potential price movements and determine optimal trading moments.
Traders can profit by buying an instrument which has been rising, or short selling a falling one, in the expectation that the trend will continue.
Szakmary and Lancaster (2015)[28] validate the effectiveness of trend following in the U.S. stock market, demonstrating its potential for generating positive returns.
[29] For day traders, trend following requires rapid execution and diligent risk management, given the shorter time frame and higher transaction costs.
[27] Scalping highly liquid instruments for off-the-floor day traders involves taking quick profits while minimizing risk (loss exposure).
[32] It applies technical analysis concepts such as over/under-bought, support and resistance zones as well as trendline, trading channel to enter the market at key points and take quick profits from small moves.
The basic idea of scalping is to exploit the inefficiency of the market when volatility increases and the trading range expands.
This enables them to trade more shares and contribute more liquidity with a set amount of capital, while limiting the risk that they will not be able to exit a position in the stock.
This is because rumors or estimates of the event (like those issued by market and industry analysts) will already have been circulated before the official release, causing prices to move in anticipation.
These traders rely on a combination of price movement, chart patterns, volume, and other raw market data to gauge whether or not they should take a trade.
However, the benefit for this methodology is that it is effective in virtually any market (stocks, foreign exchange, futures, gold, oil, etc.).
Commissions for direct access trading, such as that offered by Interactive Brokers are calculated based on volume, and are usually 0.5 cents per share or $0.25 per futures contract.
Even a moderately active day trader can expect to meet these requirements, making the basic data feed essentially "free".
