You should paper trade for at least six months. You should also focus on first one stock and then one sector. I like to focus on the airline stocks. They all usually move together. They have load numbers that come out frequently and they are highly volatile especially when oil is, so you get a lot of good movement. Plus the share prices are so low you can usually buy good size or short good size. Good Luck

Paper trading is a good idea, but will at best only give you a taste of the game, and not real results. Day trading requires live Level II quotes and instant trading. Even with that, you may put in a trade request, just to see it rejected, or delayed. Play with active stocks and this will be minimized because there will be more players in the field. Don't forget to include your costs of trading and services, including interest on margin sales when evaluating your results.

IMO, day trading is really risky.

Yes David, I would fully agree and should have included that in my response.

it depends where you leave as different counties have different investment options available.
For example in the UK you can use financial spread betting, CFDs and forex, whereas spread betting is not allowed in the US.
Secondly, day trading requires discipline, time and knowledge, so don't start before you're ready.

I definitely agree you should learn how one stock behaves then perhaps another, then the sector before you attempt to choose random stocks that you have no idea about. With anything else you want to do your homework and know how volatile a stock is, how it reacts to news, if there is any upcoming news or releases etc.

Day trading is very tough to do. Some succeed, but many professional money managers fail at day trading and they get paid to devote their career to doing research and studying the stocks. Unless you are prepared to compete with that your chances of coming out ahead are not particularly good.

If you have extra money and are willing to lose it...go for it. What can it hurt?

day trading needs knowledge, common sense, patience and a lot of self discipline, start small learn your way around it for at least half a year, maybe join an investment club

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I agree, paper trade for at least 6 months, and be at least succesful (profit of 20%+) in 85% of your trades. Also read, read, read. You can never learn enough...to many book titles to post. But you should be familiar with all aspects of the market = options, futures, fx. So pick up a couple of books on each aspect. For starters (just lookin at my shelf above my desk) The Options Course (get the work book that goes with it) by Fontanilis, Trading Commodities and Financial Futures by Kleinman. Good luck.

For day trading following one stock will surly put you to sleep. Focus on an index TF, NQ or ES for eminis.

Paper trading should only follow once you developed and mastered a strategy, then created your own trade plan. Otherwise you will be practicing haos.

th

All those opinions will be useful for your early stages but if you built an investment strategy, please never let it slip from your mind that you have to test it "out of sample".

Why just throw money away? You are really better at long term investments. The risks are too high with day trading. Paper trade to see if you can do it correctly, then perhaps only put in a few hundered or thousand to see if you come out on top. It might be better than trading a higher dollar. I think day trading is more glamour than reality.

Wade Stoddard

High-Frequency Trading (HFT)


In very broad terms, high-frequency trading (also known as HFT) refers to the buying and selling of stocks at extremely fast speeds with the help of powerful computers. Using complex algorithms, these computers can scan dozens of public and private marketplaces simultaneously, execute millions of orders a second, and alter strategies in a matter of milliseconds. In the U.S., high-frequency trading firms represent 2.0% of the approximately 20,000 firms operating today, but account for 73.0% of all equity trading volume.

from wikinvest