5 Popular Styles of Trading

There are five main types of trading for technical traders: scalping, day trading, momentum trading, swing trading, and position trading.

Mastering one style of trading is very important, but the trader also needs to be proficient in others.

For example, both scalping and day trading is what is known as intraday trading.

If you buy and sell shares in a single day, then you are considered to have traded intraday.

When choosing a trading type to suit your needs, here are some questions to ask:

• Am I short-term- or long-term-orientated?

• How much time do I have during the day to trade?

• Do I work full-time?

• Am I patient, or do I need to see results quickly?

If in doubt, stay out of the market.

Scalping

Scalping (or micro-trading) is all about taking very small profits, repeatedly.

Typically, trades last from seconds to minutes. Scalping is a trading strategy that attempts to make many profits on small price changes.

Traders who implement this strategy will place anywhere from 10 to a few hundred trades in a single day in the belief that small moves in stock prices are easier to catch than large ones.

Scalping is an expert skill, and although many people find the idea attractive (and exciting for adrenaline junkies), it is not recommended for beginners.

Day Trading

Day trading is all about buying and selling on the same day, without holding positions overnight.

Compared to scalping, this style calls for holding positions for minutes to hours versus seconds to minutes.

A day trader closes out all trades before the market closes. Most day traders use leverage to magnify the returns generated from small price movements.

Day traders are handicapped by the bid-ask spread, trading commissions and other expenses. These costs require day traders to earn significant trading profits just to break even.

Both scalping and day trading requires strong discipline — the time and ability to learn how to trade a tested and profitable strategy rapidly; and enough capital to withstand sudden and possibly, larger-than-expected losses.

Momentum Trading

In momentum trading, the trader identifies a stock that is “breaking out” and jumps on to capture as much of the momentum on the way up or down as possible.

They focus on stocks that are moving significantly in one direction on high volume.

The typical time frame for momentum trading is several hours to several days, depending on how quickly the stock moves and when it changes direction.

Swing Trading

Swing trading is about capturing short-term trends.

It is a style of trading that attempts to capture gains in a stock within one to seven days.

Swing traders use technical analysis to look for stocks with short-term price momentum.

These traders are not interested in the fundamentals or the intrinsic value of stocks, but rather in their price trends and patterns.

A typical holding period for a swing trade is three to seven days. Since the holding period is several days, intraday moves will not affect the swing trader as much as they would a day trader.

Position Trading

Position traders stay in trades for weeks to months.

The position trader endeavors to anticipate whether the current trend will continue for a much longer term than a momentum or swing trade.

Position trading gives traders more freedom: profit potential is not diminished and position traders can make considerable gains.

Long-term traders are not concerned with short-term fluctuations, because they believe that their long-term investment horizons will smooth these out.

Position trading is the polar opposite of day trading because the goal is to profit from the move in the primary trend, rather than the short-term fluctuations that occur from day to day.

None of these types of trading are limited to buying.

With certain types of instruments, the trader can also short (or short-sell) the stock.

This means that profits can be made in both rising and falling markets.