Perhaps i am a little bit to curious but do you as a day trader invest also longterm (ETFs) or would that be too "dangerous" from a daytrader perspective? Investing longterm in spy or qqq or similar etfs since the end of the financial crisis 2009 would have been a good idea. But if now is the right time to begin to invest longterm might be questionable.
I tried trading virtually everything in this world ; investing / position/swing/day trading, stocks/options/futures, outright/spread here and there various exchanges, and have lost tons of money. only day trading futures works for me.
how does a daytrader like you define before the open wheter it will be a good day to trade? Yesterday's volatility? news? distance to important levels?
What do you consider long term. For a daytrader it might be a week, for a swing trader a month to a year. I hold stocks until the trend changes, sometimes up to 5 years. But buying and holding and ignoring what the market is doing isn't in the cards.
I use a similar concept as KCalhoun in my trading. Is the market opening inside or outside of a composite value area? Range and volume are correlated. So, I pay attention to the pace of relative volume as well. When the market opens away from what has recently been perceived as value only one of two things can happen. Either way - there's a strongly likelihood that the market will attract new activity and trade away from the open and low to high or high to low for the day - offering a low risk entry and potential for large R multiple trades.