3. Open and monitor your first position
Once you’ve drawn up a trading plan and you’re ready to get started, you can open your first position. You can place both long and short positions within a single trading day.
- If you think that the market price is going to rise, you’d ‘buy’
- If you think that the market price will fall, you’d ‘sell’
Remember, as a day trader you’ll likely be opening and closing multiple trades in a day, so it’s important to keep up to date with relevant market events or breaking news.
With CFDs, you can lose more than you deposit, you do not have ownership in the underlying asset, and you may be subject to margin close-outs if you do not maintain sufficient margin.
At the end of the day, it’s time to close any trades that you still have running. Trades must be closed before 10pm UK time to avoid overnight funding charges. Keeping a record of successful and unsuccessful trades throughout the day can be a useful practice. You can analyse your performance day by day and you might spot lessons to be learnt – allowing you to act accordingly, going forward, for more favourable results.
