The following are several basic strategies by which day traders attempt to make profits. Besides these, some day traders also use contrarian (reverse) strategies (more commonly seen in algorithmic trading) to trade specifically against irrational behavior from day traders using these approaches.

Some of these approaches require shorting stocks instead of buying them normally: the trader borrows stock from his broker and sells the borrowed stock, hoping that the price will fall and he will be able to purchase the shares at a lower price. There are several technical problems with short sales --- the broker may not have shares to lend in a specific issue, some short sales can only be made if the stock price or bid has just risen (known as an "uptick"), and the broker can call for the return of its shares at any time. Some of these restrictions (in particular the uptick rule) don't apply to trades of stocks that are actually shares of an exchange-traded fund (ETF).

The Securities and Exchange Commission removed the uptick requirement for short sales on July 6, 2007.

Trend Following

Trend following, a strategy used in all trading time-frames, assumes that financial instruments which have been rising steadily will continue to rise, and vice versa with falling. The trend follower buys an instrument which has been rising, or short sells a falling one, in the expectation that the trend will continue.

Contrarian Investing

Contrarian investing is a market timing strategy used in all trading time-frames. It assumes that financial instruments which have been rising steadily will reverse and start to fall, and vice versa with falling. The contrarian trader buys an instrument which has been falling, or short-sells a rising one, in the expectation that the trend will change.

Range Trading

Range trading, or range-bound trading, is a trading style in which stocks are watched that have either been rising off a support price or falling off a resistance price. That is, every time the stock hits a high, it falls back to the low, and vice versa. Such a stock is said to be "trading in a range", which is the opposite of trending. The range trader therefore buys the stock at or near the low price, and sells (and possibly short sells) at the high. A related approach to range trading is looking for moves outside of an established range, called a breakout (price moves up) or a breakdown (price moves down), and assume that once the range has been broken prices will continue in that direction for some time.

Scalping

Scalping was originally referred to as spread trading. Scalping is a trading style where small price gaps created by the bid-ask spread are exploited. It normally involves establishing and liquidating a position quickly, usually within minutes or even seconds.

Scalping highly liquid instruments for off the floor day traders involves taking quick profits while minimizing risk (loss exposure). It applies technical analysis concepts such as over/under-bought, support and resistance zones as well as trendline, trading channel to enter the market at key points and take quick profits from small moves. The basic idea of scalping is to exploit the inefficiency of the market when volatility increases and the trading range expands.

Rebate Trading

Rebate Trading is an equity trading style that uses ECN rebates as a primary source of profit and revenue. Most ECNs charge commissions to customers who want to have their orders filled immediately at the best prices available, but the ECNs pay commissions to buyers or sellers who "add liquidity" by placing limit orders that create "market-making" in a security. Rebate traders seek to make money from these rebates and will usually maximize their returns by trading low priced, high volume stocks. This enables them to trade more shares and contribute more liquidity with a set amount of capital, while limiting the risk that they will not be able to exit a position in the stock. Rebate trading was pioneered at Domestic Securities, founded by Harvey Houtkin the author of "Soes Bandits". Later this strategy was taken from Domestic Securities to Momentum Securities over the MarketXT ECN with the MPID LSPD. The rebate trading group at Momentum Securities / Tradescape was responsible for the $280 million buyout from online trading giant E*Trade.

News Playing

News playing is primarily the realm of the day trader. The basic strategy is to buy a stock which has just announced good news, or short sell on bad news. Such events provide enormous volatility in a stock and therefore the greatest chance for quick profits (or losses). Determining whether news is "good" or "bad" must be determined by the price action of the stock, because the market reaction may not match the tone of the news itself. The most common cause for this is when rumors or estimates of the event (like those issued by market and industry analysts) were already circulated before the official release, and prices have already moved in anticipation---the news is already priced in the stock.

Price action

Keeping things simple can also be an effective methodology when it comes to trading. There are groups of traders known as "Price Action Traders" who are a form of technical traders that rely on technical analysis but do not rely on conventional indicators to point them in the direction of a trade or not. These traders rely on a combination of price movement, chart patterns, volume, and other raw market data to gauge whether or not they should take a trade. This is seen as a "simplistic" and "minimalist" approach to trading but is not by any means easier than any other trading methodology. It requires a sound background in understanding how markets work and the core principles within a market, but the good thing about this type of methodology is it will work in virtually any market that exists (Stocks, Forex, Futures, Gold, Oil, etc.).

Artificial Intelligence

As computers gain processing power (see Moore's law) it has become easier to leverage this to evaluate the market on a deeper level. A method of using Artificial Intelligence to weigh news events was created by http://www.stockhawk.net. This method tracks words and phrases in news articles, and then takes the change in price as an action indicating whether the word or phrase is positive or negative. Over years, hundreds of uses of each phrase would give words a strong positive or negative relationship. This technology can then be leveraged to explore the historical significance of a news item.

Day trading techniques Topic - Stock Market

A stock market is a public market (a loose network of economic transactions not a physical facility or discrete entity) for the trading of company stock and derivatives at an agreed price; these are securities listed on a stock exchange as well as those only traded privately.