When you buy shares of a stock and then sell the same before the market closes is what is called a Day Trade. Since day traders make far more trades than the average investor, cutting costs is just as important as making money by buying and selling (or shorting and covering).
A day trader, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), is an investor who makes four or more day-trades in a five-day span. Any exchange that you open and close within 24 hours is referred to as a day trade.
To avoid making impulsive or emotional decisions, you will need a straightforward plan and a lot of discipline. Before jumping into this fast-paced style of trading, anyone interested in best day trading should take a day trading course and conduct thorough research to establish a solid strategy.
These are the following criteria which you must meet and maintain to perform day-trading: –
- Maintain a minimum balance of $25,000 – If the account value falls below that threshold on any given day, your broker will halt day trading before you make a deposit to raise the account value above $25,000.
- Should not trade for more than 4x the maintenance margin excess – Anything over the $25,000 minimum maintenance margin is considered excess. If you have a $40,000 balance, you are $15,000 above the minimum. On margin, you can sell up to $60,000 (4 x $15,000). If you trade more, your broker will send you a margin call, which you must respond to within 5 business days.
It is important to remember that some brokers might even impose stricter requirements than these ISC rules.
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Should you Day-Trade?
It depends, though it is true that you can make a high-class living out of it you must remember that with higher profit comes higher risks. It is important to understand that the more often you sell, the more often you must pay the taxes and transaction fees.
Though it is fast-paced and exciting, the stocks you will be trading are generally high risk and day-traders are subject to more restrictions and limitations than long-time traders. However, if you are good at it, you can gain institutional access, and special privileges.
How to Have the Best Day-Trading Platform
Here are some things which will help you create the best online day-trading brokerage platform.
No-Commission Fees
Commission fees are such hindrances to the trader especially day-traders. This is because they trade daily and will not be interested in paying commission fees for each of their trades. Now, it is true that online brokerage platforms get their earning through commissions but there are other ways to earn through your platform as well like advertising and such. Day-traders only tend to use platforms which do not have any commission rates.
High Performance on your Platform
Day-Traders buy and sell their shares at a very fast pace. So, the performance of your platform should not be a hindrance to them. As even a latency of half a second will render a trader from purchasing shares from a company.
User-Friendly
If your platform has a UI/UX which hides most of the important features behind a screen of unwanted stuff, then chances are traders will not stick long enough with it. This is due to the high presence of older people in the industry who might not be technologically sound. It is highly important to make sure that your platform is very much see it, touch it.
Real-Time Quotations
Best brokerage sites online make sure to give the most accurate quotations as soon as it is getting updated as possible. As highlighted before, it is important to make sure that your platform would not be a hindrance for the traders. Showing the most accurate quotes are rock solid for your platform to be the best of best.
Visualization Capabilities
Veterans in the stock market industry will use the historical records as much as possible to gain leverage before they invest in a stock. But these records will not make sense to the naked eye and visualizing them using different charts will prove useful tremendously.
Back-Testing Tools
Another area which clearly distinguishes between the best platform to the rest will be the capability to back-test a strategy on historical records. Many top platforms support this tool and it has been found that it is used by veterans and beginners alike to gain leverage over the others.
Not Considering PFOF
PFOF: Payment for Order Flow, it represents the reimbursement and benefits which are received by the trading platform for keeping the order of shares in flow. As day-traders tend to trade in masses on a day-to-day basis, they cannot afford to lose money in each of their transactions.
Earnings Analyser
This is such an interesting tool and is easily the most loved tool out of all. This tool lets the user get analysis of their future and past earnings. It takes the whole point of visualization to another level. Some platforms even leverage AI to try to predict the future earning of the trader.
Making the Platform Multi-Device Friendly
Some traders like to perform their trades through multiple devices simultaneously, for example, through their laptop and mobile at the same time. It is very important to make sure that these traders have a seamless experience. Many trading platforms do not have this important feature, so by incorporating it, yours tends to become the best trading platform in the market.
Cryptocurrency Trading
Even though cryptocurrency trading does not fall under the share market, the majority of the people that do it are from the share market. Some of the best online trading brokerage platforms offer it and this feature is very much loved. As the cryptocurrency stream is very much like the share market, incorporating it within your platform will be a huge success.
Platform-Independence
Your platform should be able to run on as many devices as possible. For this, the most viable option will be to go with a web-based service rather than an installable application or program. This will make sure that the users will be able to access your trading platform with as little equipment as possible.
Arbitrage Opportunities Acknowledgment
Simultaneous buying (at a low price exchange) and selling (at a high price market) allows profit opportunities and is one of the most widely used strategies for day-trading tools to benefit from the small price gap of a dual-listed share on multiple exchanges. This necessitates access to both markets, the ability to monitor price discrepancies as they arise, and the ability to conduct trades in a timely manner.
These are the top practices followed by the best online trading platforms. Today’s day-traders are aware of all these features and will not use a platform if it does not offer them. So, it is highly crucial for your day-trading platform to have these important features to turn itself into the best online trading brokerage platform.
