Proponent of daytrading here. Assuming you have even a mild edge and you do a lot of day trades, the law of large numbers is on your side.
`I was making so much money swing trading that I converted to daytrading because it's less stressful` Said no one ever
Usually a mild edge isn't going to cut it because of commissions. Lets say commission is 0.1%. Which doesn't sound like much but lets say you buy/sell 10 trades a day. That equates to 1% in commission already. Are you sure that 10 trades have positive net value after a -1% equity? Take into effect that probably not all 10 trades are winners, some are winners and some are losers too.
I think it's all relative to bet size and knowledge. Generally, the less you know and the more you risk the higher the stress level. Swing trading never cause me any stress, but it's certainly true that having an open position makes you more obsessed than normal. At least for me. But even going flat EOD as a day trader I still think about the market pretty much all the time. It certainly is an obession.
Therein lies the magic of zero commission! A world of possibilities has opened since brokers went to zero last fall.
I've been daytrading since 1999. I love daytrading stocks and ETFs. I do both day and swing trades, as many as 40-60/day. Lessons learned: It's smart to focus mainly on small under 10% gap continuations above pd high Use combination of both trailing and hard stops Charts $10 - $40 /share are best; charts under $10 are usually awful Be done by 10:30 Try hybrid intraday swing trading, enter by 10, use lod stop, exit 3:30 #1 rule is small stops, most of mine are less than $70 per trade There's hundreds more tips, those are critical
I went the other way. I found sitting in front of a computer all day more stressful. Granted you can get caught with a gap against you but you also profit now and then with a gap in your favour. I am able to make my decisions after the market is closed. I spend maybe 30 minutes a day record keeping, scanning and planning trades for the next day. I don't have to make decisions on the spur of the moment. Set it and forget it bracket orders made just after the open and then the rest of the day can be spent doing something else. Market opens at 6:30 am so I pretty well am done trading by 6:40. I found that my returns were very similar. "It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting." Jesse Livermore