If you are to succeed in trading, you need to find out which trading strategy best suits you. This means taking into account your needs and resources, your expectations for return, and your risk tolerance. Even things like your age must be considered when you are choosing a trading strategy.

Becoming a day trader – The term “day trader” refers to the fact that stock traders who use this approach to buying and selling stocks within a single day, not holding a stocks overnight. They make money by exploiting short-term fluctuations in the stock market, and avoid the risk of being exposed to changes in the market overnight.

You can reduce the risks involved with day trading by sticking to fast, small profits instead of waiting for a stock to hit its peak. As with all other forms of trade, there are always drawbacks. Day trading is hard work, we must remain vigilant throughout the trading day of the population. Moreover, since brokers charge a commission for each trade has its benefits outweigh the costs of frequent trading.

It should also be known that most day traders fail.

The Swing Trader – Instead of the day trading, these traders hold position over time, usually days or weeks, and look for opportunities to make big profits. Swing traders often use technical analysis to determine when to buy and sell shares.

Because you are making fewer trades, you have to go for a higher return on each trade, so this risk must be taken into account. In addition, you must consider the risks associated with being exposed to market fluctuations during a longer period of time.

Longer-term Swing Trader – If you take this approach, which is basically following the same strategy as the operator of the oscillation described above, except that you already have the stocks. The transactions are usually done within months.

You can use this approach if you focus on stock indexes and mutual funds, or through technical and fundamental analysis of each stock. The advantage of adopting a long-term approach is that you avoid being distracted by noise in the data, which occurs in all markets. Small fluctuations are less important because you are looking at longer-term trends, but can not be ignored completely.

The disadvantage of this approach is that you are not well positioned to capitalize on short-term movements in the market and the risk may increase with the amount of time that the stock is held.

Buy and Hold, I don’t recommend this for anyone. Today’s market is much different than 20 years ago and just holding a stock long term does not increase your chances of winning.