[kimchi]

An old currency trader friend of mine is on the board of a large broker in the UK. He deals with mainly with the CFD and spreadbetting side of the business and is often candid about the trading game when we speak.

I'm always looking for ways to improve my trading and often pick his brain for new ideas. I asked him what style of trading is the most successful amongst his clients. He says he can pretty much knows all his consistenly successful daytrading clients as they're so few in number. Swing and position traders do abysmally as a group, but better than the daytraders.

I believe this may have to do with the trading vehicle. CFDs and spreadbets suffer from slippage and a significant spread most of the time for individual equities. This is just too much of a handicap to overcome when trading in a relatively narrow channel.

A daytrader trading a volitile market with an average channel width of 2% has to be a magnitude more accurate than a swing trading trading a weekly or monthly channel of the same market 5-10% (or more) wide.

Pig4Bill keeps talking about tiny commissions and no slippage, but this isn't the case with all traders, and certainly not those with non-US accounts.

Daytrading for me would be like sitting in front of a giant slot machine with flashing red & green arrows. I'd much prefer getting my data EOD to peruse over with a cup of tea, less pressure, and more time.