This is possible if one is willing to do the work required.
What I do has three levels of risk therefore this is NOT something I recommend to anyone else.
But I am willing to share what I do.
1 – I day trade.
This means I rely heavily on technical info.
I only use fundamentals to get a handle on big picture info in re markets and sectors.
Sometimes it brings my attention to certain stocks.
As a day trader I cash out at the end of the day on average 4 days out of 5.
I only hold overnight when:
I absolutely believe that a particular stock is on a roll.
I also am looking for when, in your daily pdfs, the Executive Summary is in sync with the characterizations you have made about trading days deeper into the report (pg. 8).
When they are in conflict I will not hold overnight.
Your intraday timings are critical for me.
As just one example, when you designate 9:40 am as H and then a CIT at 10:00 or 10:10 with a low at 10:20 or 10:30, rest assured that if have indeed held overnight, I sell that position within 3-4 minutes of the open.
Most of the time I buy the position back lower. Sometimes it continues to go up so I wait until the next Low point.
2 – I day trade options.
They cost a fraction of what the cost is of the underlying equity costs. That’s the good news.
However it is critical to understand however the intrinsic value and the time value of an option is.
I also carefully track and correlate the price of a particular option with the cost of that underlying equity.
Since Schwab’s software (Street Smart Edge) does not do that, I have to do that manually. I do that all day long.
(This is about to change when Schwab acquires TDK Ameritrade and incorporates their Think or Swim software which does.)
3 – I day trade options for “high flyers.”
TSLA, AMZN, NVDA, NFLX, etc.
The advantage is that they typically have a wide trading price range and most importantly, volume.
Low volume is perilous for a day trader.
A day trader seeks to capture a part of the movement (up or down). I often miss some of the movement. I am fine with that. As Raj says, remember TMAR (Take the Money and Run).
Using the studies as well your technical info I am often able to capture MOST of the movement.
Some other points:
Lastly, I was a stockbroker for 2 years and was the onsite broker at a day trading firm in the earliest days of day trading.
That education and experience has been vital.
I use two computers.
One has StreetSmartEdge open and it has all my studies for an individual stock:
Price (a line)
Volume (columns)
NASDAQ (a line)
RSI and RSI Stochastic (different colored lines)
MACD and MACD Stochastic (different colored lines)
I use StreetSmartEdge as well to place conditional orders (that includes trailing stops).
The pricing of trailing stops for options is quite strategic but difficult. I am NOT great at pricing trailing stops for options.
Trading:
On a separate laptop – I keep Schwab.com which displays by default all my accounts at once (I have several).
I often trade option positions for separate stocks in separate accounts. It’s a visual thing. This way by constantly refreshing the screen I can quickly see if I am making (or losing money) in each position (each position being in a separate account).
I keep a backup cell phone on my desk with Yahoo Finance open. I have about 15 different tickers in a watch list and I can see all 15 with their respective reds and greens and thus with a quick glace I see how multiple stocks are moving throughout the day. It gives a sense how the overall market is doing and how all these are responding.
Before bed:
It’s study time:
CNBC.com, YouTube videos, etc.
When your pdf arrives I set up my manual worksheets for the day.
On those sheets I list the intraday timings as well as various account balances.
I should also mention that another advantage in trading options is that they
settle in just one day (unlike stocks and funds, where you have to wait 48
hours). So I can trade every day without having to wait for cash to be available to
trade with. Therefore if I have cashed out of all positions every day that means 100% of my accounts will be available to trade the next day.
