I was wondering what is the opinion of successful traders regarding day trading vs swing trading. Can one be more successful day tarding or swing trading. Thanks for your opinions
Day trading is much harder than swing trading and requires complete focus...its a full time job in itself. you can do good and profitable swing trading while holding another job. I would say all-in-all day trading is definitely harder because your costs (slippage+bid-ask+commissions) as a fraction of your profits are much higher in day trading compared to swing trading. However, I am primarily a day trader
Consistently profitable day trading is very difficult. Swing trading is easier, but you still have to do a lot of prep work and develop a plan. There are some subscription services that provide swing trade ideas and do the "homework" for you, but you still have to have your own plan for position size and trade management. If you don't have a trader's mindset (look up Mark Douglas' 5 Fundamental Truths and 7 Principles of Consistency), neither will work for you.
How do you define swing trading? To me it sounds much more difficult than day trading because of its subjective definitions while the definition of day trading is clear. For example, what is an appropriate holding time for positions in swing trading? Nobody knows and it varies with markets, market cycles, volatility, etc. I'm saying this while I'm a swing trader just because of not having the energy to trade intraday due to growing older. If you have the energy intraday is the way to go.
It all depends on market conditions. Day trading is superior to swing or position trading in very volatile markets i.e Huge ATRs, intraday swings, etc. The shorter the time frame, the more volatility you need to cover the cost of the trade.
Assuming time based bars, all charts are the same, only thing that changes is length of each bar. The difficulty that lies is in concept the same for swing or day-trading, and that is establishing a multi timeframe relationship in price. Noticing the trends within trends and identifying which one is failing and which one is taking over. This does not change one bit if you are swing or day-trading, it's just much faster in daytrading because by definition the timeframes are faster, and travel and create new trends at a much faster frequency. The rest is risk management, which is a bit trickier in swing trading due to closed markets.
the difference between day trading and swing trading is the margin requirement typically a day trader will go out on day trading margin and go home flat a swing trader needs twice as much money to hold a position overnight
How are they the same when the lengths are different? An 8 tick bar on a 5min chart might look the same as an 80 tick bar on an H4 or daily chart but they are not the same thing.
================= Great discussion; If your name is Joshua Lukeman[ Market Makers Edge Book ;;MS company.....]; day trading is KING. But Lots of day traders lie... If your nickname is murray t turtle; swing trading- investing is best, less comissions, more fun ,,more PROFIT Lost of ways to define swing position- trend trading; all data, 10 year -monthly candle charts help ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7 years +/experience may help , not a prediction;; Wisdom is profitable to direct