If you want to trade shares on an intraday basis, then there are many different ways you can do this, particularly if you live in the UK. For example you can use a spread betting company or trade through a CFD provider, or you can simply buy and sell shares through a traditional share broker. So how easy is it to actually make money day trading shares?

Well I've been a trader for several years and in my experience trying to make money from share trading over the course of a single trading day is one of the hardest ways to make money. The major problem you face is that of volatility, or lack of it in a lot of cases. Sometimes even the most liquid of shares have days where they barely move and this is a real problem for traders because they need decent price moves in order to make any worthwhile profits.

The other real problem is that however you decide to trade the markets, you always have a spread to overcome whichever share you choose to trade. This is a problem in itself because you will often need the share to move a few points just so you can break even, never mind make a profit.

There are also other factors that make intraday trading difficult and one of the biggest is the wild swings that occur in the wider market. Although shares will often move in accordance with the other shares in the same sector, you will also find that the larger shares are heavily influenced by the direction of the overall market as well. For example most FTSE 100 shares will obviously move in the same direction as the FTSE 100 index itself.

This makes it difficult to predict future price moves because you always have to have one eye on the wider market, and the news announcements that influence this index. As a result of these wider market moves, you will often find that any company-specific analysis based on charting patterns, for example, will be rendered useless if the wider market suddenly moves against you.

So overall while it is possible to make profits from share trading over such a short time frame, I have found that it's much easier to trade individual shares over a number of days and weeks instead. This way you will eliminate a lot of the short-term price movements that are hard to legislate for, and you should find that it is easier to predict future price moves.

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Tags: investing, finance, stocks, day trading, trading, shares, share trading, intraday trading, day trading shares