Day trading is buying and selling stocks in the course of a single day. This typically is done in large volume orders to make more money from smaller moves. This can definitely be a very profitable hobby if you do your homework.
The most common question that is asked about day trading is: Do I have to sit in front of the computer all day to make money?
In short, no. You do not have to slave over your keyboard for hours upon hours. You mainly just need to trade when the biggest volume is happening. Which is in the morning hours. So most day traders spend just about 4 hours really watching the computer. Plus, they do not trade on the weekend. Which makes day trading so appealing.
If something is an investment, then it has risk. If there was anything that was 100% everyone would be doing that. So consider day trading the same way. You can make plenty of money, but you are guaranteed to lose some as well. Accepting losses when they come is something you better get used to because nobody bats 1000 at this game.
However, day trading does have a slight advantage in some ways. The fact is that it is very rare that stocks lose a lot of value in just one day. If a stock is going at $74.50 at 9:30 am, then it is doubtful it will tumble all the way down to $50 in just a couple of hours.
If you only have a little bit of money to work with then it will be slow going at first. Simply put it is hard to make $2000 in one day when you are only working with $5000. However, if you have $30000 to work with then you have the potential to make that kind of money.
One more important thing to remember is stock trading is to pay attention for the amount of shares, this is the biggest factor when it comes to day trading. If you are not paying attention to both, you will not make the money that you are shooting for.
Finally, with all investments. Take your time and learn. There are demo accounts out there where you can practice with real stock info, but not lose your kids college fund in the process. So make sure to take full advantage of the chance to "learn before you buy".
