Trading Basics

Day traders tend to use a lot of acronyms to make communication more efficient. Making sense of trading terminology should be one of the easier parts of day trading, so make sure you are familiar with the terms below. HOD - High of Day (nHOD = new high of day) LOD -...

Finding Stocks to Watch A stock watch list is like a food menu for that trading day. It should contain active stocks that are ripe to trade based on technical or fundamental news catalyst. A trader can have several watch lists, however, there should be two very...

Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) Charles Dow, a founder of the Wall Street Journal newspaper, created the Dow Jones Average (DJA) in 1886. This index was composed of 12 industrial companies. In 1896, the industrials split away from the transports and was renamed...

What it is New traders or traders who wish to test out new indicators are well advised to start with paper trading. Paper trading is the simulating of real trades on paper or with paper money. Seasoned traders with over a decade of experience understood paper trading...

What is a Short Squeeze? A short squeeze is a frenzied spike in a stock price resulting from desperate short-sellers trying to buy cover their short positions to prevent larger losses or margin calls. Usually the availability of short shares are limited or...

What is Volume in Stocks? Volume is counted as the total number of shares that are actually traded (bought and sold) during the trading day or specified set period of time. It is a measure of the total turnover of shares. Each ticket represents a trade and counted...

What Are Market Futures? Stock market futures, also called market futures or equity index futures, are futures contracts that track a specific benchmark index like the S&P 500. While commodity futures require delivery of the underlying goods (IE: corn, sugar,...

What is a Breakout? A breakout is a bullish technical analysis term depicting a price move that exceeds a defined resistance level and proceeds to sustain higher prices until the next resistance level is formed. Breakouts are usually accompanied with a surge in volume...

Stock Market History The United States stock markets recognized as the most liquid and widely followed equities markets in the world. Where the US markets go, the world markets tend to follow. It is a bell weather and benchmark that still leads the world in terms in...

Day Trading Defined Day trading is the activity of buying and selling financial instruments (stocks, bonds, options, futures or commodities) with the intent of profiting from price movements in the underlying security within a single trading day. While positions may...

Goals of Day Trading The goal of day trading is to generate profits from the price action of the underlying financial instrument in the shortest period of time. This is often accomplished with the use of margin. The use of leverage can magnify the gains from...

Difference Between Day Trading and Investing Timeframes The main differences between day trading and investing are the activity levels and position holding times. Day trading involves active management with a short-term holding period, whereas investing involves...

As a day trader, risk management is just as important as developing a solid trading strategy. No day trader is perfect and all day traders will inevitably have losing trades. A fine-tuned risk management strategy is what gives traders the ability to lose on trades...