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Trading Strategies

What Is Day Trading

Day trading is trading inside one day: every trade opened and closed between the day's open and its close, so that nothing is held overnight, no swap is charged and no overnight gap is taken. This paper shows you gold on Friday 18 July 2025 hour by hour from real bars, the idea as a shop that shuts at night, the same day on the quarter-hour chart, the night between Friday's close and Monday's open that a day trade never sees, and the Swap column on your platform that stays at zero.

Difficulty
Beginner
Reading time
5 min
Pages
8
Reviewed by
Saman Rahbar

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One day, hour by hour

Day trading is trading inside one day. Here is one, from real hourly bars: gold on Friday 18 July 2025. The day opened at 3340.35, made its low of 3331.87 at 09:00 and its high of 3361.27 at 15:45, and closed at 3350.95, twenty-nine dollars from bottom to top. The busiest hour, 09:00, moved eleven dollars; the quietest, 21:00, three. A day trader's trades all open and close between that first bar and that last one, and the size of the moves they work with is the size of these hours.

A shop that shuts at night

Picture a shop that shuts at night. It opens in the morning, does its business through the day, and by the close every trade is finished: the till is counted, the sign is turned, and nothing is left on the counter till morning. A day trader runs the shop that way. What the price does overnight, while the markets in other time zones are open, is somebody else's business, because the shop is closed and holds nothing. That is the whole rule, and everything else about day trading follows from it.

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