Well, maybe. You can also buy breakouts and sell targets. I don't daytrade, but if I did, that's what I would do.
Buying breakouts and shorting breakdowns doesnt work any more as a strategy by itself, you have to know alot more about the pattern these days, and you have to have information nailed to beat randomness. If you just keep buying breakouts on volume/shorting breakdowns on volume without knowing what you are trading you will lose your ass in this day and age, thats the reality of trading in 2017.
There are days in which day trading is excellent and days in which it is not. If you stick to the days in which day trading is excellent...you will do v well!
To the novice, it is easy to say "just trade breakouts" of "just trade trend pullbacks" but as any experienced day trader knows, real time recognition of such, especially across time frames is trickier said than done. The art and the science of the thing is precise definitions of such and tested application of viable strategies to extract profit from simple concepts.
It took me almost a decade. I worked at a primary dealer for sometime and I don't think I'd have the ability to do what I do without that experience. It's almost impossible for anyone to do it outside of a professional environment. If someone is looking to daytrade, or says they're a daytrader it breaks my heart. You will lose your life savings at worst, and become profitable at best. Your odds are 99.9 percent against you, so my question is what do you know or do that makes you different?
Sad really considering its actually a very easy game to beat, all you have to do is not overthink it, jump on direction, hold long enough to matter, give your SL enough breathing space so it only gets hit after direction changes, but not too much. You'd think you'd have that sorted in a day, but market messes with your mind, makes you trade stupid, takes years to not trade stupid
I day trade the ES: Difficult, however, I've found that creating a strategy for entry trigger, exit target, and stops need to be super simple. For me, my success started when I began to design my strategy with only a couple of indicators and one chart. I don't "guess" the direction nor do I care about the direction or the results of any particular trade. I just take the signals, exit or stop out per the strategy. Each trade is merely a data point and means nothing to me. It's the long term results that guide me.