Short-term trading

Scalping is an extreme short-term strategy, where traders aim to enter and exit positions in a matter of seconds or minutes. Scalpers often carry out hundreds of transactions on an average trading day in an attempt to make a significant profit.

Traders that use scalping strategies focus on price action and technical analysis only and ignore any elements of fundamental analysis. This short-term strategy is often used for the forex and commodities markets, as certain currency pairs such as EUR/USD and EUR/GBP, and commodities such as Brent and WTI crude oil, can experience rapid price movements on a daily basis. Scalpers also tend to ignore even short-term trends within the financial markets, as these do not have time to materialise before a trade is completed.

As scalpers are carrying out a substantially larger number of transactions than a day trader or swing trader, for example, the risks of trading are magnified. This is because there is even more chance that the trades will be unsuccessful and you will have to pay the losses, even if the stake or position is smaller.

Read more about scalping strategies​ >

Day trading is possibly the most popular short-term trading strategy that can be used for any asset class or financial market. Day traders will buy and sell multiple instruments throughout the day with the aim of closing out positions before the market shuts. This means that they do not carry positions overnight, in turn, avoiding overnight fees.

Day trading creates a balance between an extreme short-term strategy, like scalping, and a longer-term strategy such as swing trading. These types of traders could use hourly charts to analyse price data and spot recent emerging or declining trends in order to decide whether to buy or sell a financial instrument. Once they see that their chosen market is moving in an unfavourable direction, they can exit the position quickly to avoid losses.

Day traders have slightly more time to assess their trades than scalpers, slightly lowering the level of risk. They can study price charts to identify the previous day’s highs and lows, which can then help to build an effective strategy for the current trading day. Day traders also avoid the risk of gapping and slippage on price charts, which pose a threat for any positions that are carried overnight.

Read more about day trading >

Swing trading is a short to medium-term strategy, where traders hold open positions for a number of days or weeks. As implied by its name, traders may examine the swing highs and swing lows of an asset’s price in order to assess whether it has upcoming potential for profit.

This strategy involves a lot of forward thinking and prediction. Swing traders aim to predict when and where the price is likely to move next before entering the position, and then ride the ups and downs of the asset. They may only close the position when it does not seem to be following the same pattern anymore. This is a particularly popular strategy for stocks.

Whereas the previous two short-term strategies focus more on technical analysis and price action, swing trading encompasses both technical and fundamental analysis. This is because traders should have knowledge of economic indicators and events that may have an effect on the financial markets, which could cause their position to rise or drop at any time throughout the trade.

Read more about how to swing trade >

Trend trading can apply to both short-term and long-term trading strategies. In this case, a short-term trend trading strategy would focus on trends that materialise on price charts for a matter of minutes, hours or days, but may not exceed past this time.

A short-term trend following strategy is based on the expectation that an asset’s price will continue in its headed direction and will not reverse for the time that you have the position open for. Traders would typically look to buy an asset (go long) if it is seeing an upward trend, or sell the asset (go short) if it is seeing a downward trend.

Traders on our platform can use trendlines​, which make up part of our draw tools, to help identify trends that may be emerging or reversing on a price chart. These can also help to spot breakouts from a trend that appeared previously to be steady. Short-term trends can be analysed from a variety of chart timeframes​, including by the minute, hourly or daily intervals.

Read more about trend trading >

Moving averages can help a trader to identify whether the price of an asset is trending upwards or downwards. A simple moving average (SMA) usually uses a timeframe of around 15-20 days for short-term trends, although this can be adjusted to the timeframe that you want to analyse. If the asset is on trend to rise, the moving average will start to slope upward, so you could take a buy position at its lowest price in the hope that its value will rise. On the other hand, if you are looking to sell and go short on an asset, you could look for a moving average that is declining or flattening. Then, you could sell the asset at its high point and wait for the price to drop before re-purchasing at a lower price, securing a profit.

The relative strength index​​ (RSI) helps to identify overbought or oversold levels for a security, comparing its relative strength or weakness in comparison with other assets in the market. In general, a reading of 70 indicates that an asset is overbought, while a reading below 30 shows that it has is oversold. The RSI can also introduce buy and sell signals for short-term traders by looking for divergence, failure swings and centreline crossovers on a trading chart. Some traders may buy on a dip when negative momentum is decelerating and sell on a rally when positive momentum is decelerating, for example.

A stochastic oscillator​​ can be used to decide whether a financial instrument has a good value based on its closing price range over a short period of time. When the stochastic lines are above 80, the indicator signals that the instrument is overbought, which may prompt a trader to sell. When the stochastic lines are below 20, this signals that the instrument is oversold, which may prompt a trader to buy. It can also be used to predict short-term trend reversals as part of a divergence strategy.