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What is Intraday Trading?

  • Feb 7, 2025

This strategy involves purchasing and selling stocks within a single trading day to benefit from small price fluctuations. However, it's important to fully understand the mechanics and risks involved in this type of trading.

In this article, you will learn intraday trading meaning, and how to use the right tools to make informed decisions and align your trading goals with appropriate information and actions.

Intraday Trading Meaning

Intraday trading refers to buying and selling stocks within the same trading session, aiming to profit from short-term price fluctuations rather than holding positions for investment horizons spanning over days or years.

Enabled by the market depth and liquidity, such punts target leveraging volatility by entering and exiting selected stocks swiftly to pocket gains from minor value swings over minutes or hours while avoiding interim risks from extended exposures or variable external dynamics.

How To Do Intraday Trading?

Executing profitable rapid intraday relies on selecting momentum shares aligning favoured technical and fundamental trajectories for efficient entries and exits riding volatility.

1. Choose Highly Liquid Stocks 

With more liquidity ensuring frictionless execution, intraday succeeds. Optimal share selection focuses on frequently traded mid and small caps across indices seeing significant investor activity rather than thinly traded shells. Therein, vast volumes enable smooth entries and exits.

2. Understand volatility

Intraday trading thrives on interim volatility, enabling entries at relative lows to sell into upticks quickly. But excessively volatile stocks with wide unpredictable swings also pose outsized risks of adverse moves crushing positions before exits. Optimal intraday shares display moderate, measured volatility. Analysing 52-week ranges offers insights.Know More about HOW TO BUY YOUR FIRST STOCK?

3. Evaluate Correlation

Choices are strongly co-moving with market direction, aiding in profiting from broader upswings. Share prices generally trend directionally, fluctuating more sharply in multiples of benchmark moves. Thereby, correlated stock selection avoids adverse standalone drifts, unlike isolated price-specific risks.

4. Favor Higher Trade Volumes 

Higher trade volumes signal investor conviction backing growing or declining share prices through demand-supply dynamics, enabling low-risk entries in either direction. Quietly traded securities necessitate caution, given one-sided volumes could swiftly upend positioning. Reputable data sites simplify volume and price chart analysis.

Benefits of Intraday Trading

Intraday trading offers recurring gains for skilled traders who can control losses and leverage liquidity, pricing lag, and margins to their advantage despite the inherent risks of volatile stocks.

1. Lower Risks 

By promptly settling trades within a single session, intraday trading limits losses compared to holding investments during volatile periods. This reduces risk parameters compared to long-term investments but requires expertise.

2. Lower Commission Charges

No charges for delivery processing fees on intraday ownership transfers. Retail discount houses offer a flat rate under Rs. 20 per trade, optimising net returns from contract differentials and using margin leverage efficiently.

3. Higher Profit Potential 

Intraday trading can yield exponential rewards if done strategically. In volatile markets, mirroring entries and exits amplifies gains while hedging one side, like derivatives. Riding waves with success rates nearing 50% can still yield positive returns in the long run.

4. Liquidity Benefits

Intraday trading allows immediate access to liquid profits, unlike long-term investments or swing trades that tie up capital in stocks. This provides an underappreciated edge for traders.

Associated Risks

Intraday trading can be profitable for skilled traders who surf the waves of volatility. However, for newcomers, a lack of experience and confidence can lead to painful losses within a single trading session. Therefore, caution is advised. It is important to have significant capital and experience before attempting to trade consistently.

Intraday trading revolves around predicting hourly market moves to ride the waves. Technical analysis can be helpful, but market-moving surprises can upend logic, leading to losses. Therefore, risk management is crucial for success in intraday trading.

Alternative Trading Methods

Beyond rapid intraday trading, intermediate options allow flexibility, harnessing upside potential through extended holds while moderating interim risks using hedges.

1. Standard Investing

Buying shares outright for long holding periods allows partaking in equity wealth creation organically by capturing valuation growth and dividends over years providing natural buffers countering volatility. Thereby, broader uptrends uplift portfolios through compounding, even if requiring deep convictions during crises.

2. Momentum Trading

This technical strategy identifies recovering shares based on price and volume activity to benefit from turning sentiment as market participants recognise strengthening fundamentals with lag. Though necessitating diligence to avoid false signals, the approach smooths some interim amplitude risks.

3. Swing Trading

Establishing contrarian positions across comparable stocks or pairs trading strategies allows for partially insulating portfolios from sector-wide fluctuations. Thereby, some calculated alternated buying and selling neutralises market risks if preserving net outlooks ultimately. Despite the need for increased liquidity, traders are cautious and limit their risk-taking by engaging in swing trades.

Tips to Follow for Intraday Trading

  1. To find profitable opportunities, research both macroeconomic factors and stock fundamentals.
  2. It is important to manage risk by setting protective stop losses and only making trades within one's risk appetite and margin cover.
  3. To ensure consistency in trading, it is recommended to concentrate on specific niche sectors and leverage proven trading abilities.
  4. To maximise profits, it's important to track your monthly performance and use indicators wisely.

Conclusion

Intraday trading can be highly rewarding due to the market's volatility. However, success in this field depends on careful stock selection, quick execution skills, and the ability to manage risks effectively rather than relying on luck. Therefore, it's important to align your goals with your capital allocation strategy and gradually build your capabilities to achieve consistent gains over a longer period. Remember to follow intraday trading today.

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by Team Mirae Asset Sharekhan

Guiding Wealth Creation since 1995

We've been ranked as India’s No. 1 Retail Broker by Asiamoney Brokers Poll 2023. Here, we bring you the latest in the world of Trading and Investments in our effort to Make the Markets work for YOU!

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