There are as many different trading strategies as there are traders. Generally they can be distinguished though by the time frame in which they take place. I suggest that every trader experiments with different strategies and then decide for himself what he is most comfortable with.
A) Longer term strategies (from a day trader perspective)
Investing: Investors buy shares of a certain company because they believe in its long-term growth perspective. They have little interest in most of the daily price movements and are looking to hold their shares for several years.
Swing trading: Swing trading means to hold stocks anywhere from one to five days and sometimes more. Swing traders try to take advantage of certain "key" situations in a stock price's movement. Such a situation would be a buy after a pullback into solid support during a longer term uptrend. Swing trading belongs to one of the easier to implement strategies and is excellent for people with small accounts.
B) Short term strategies
Momentum trading: A momentum trade usually lasts anywhere from 30 seconds to about 1 hour. Momentum trading is based on strong price movements and counter price movements often caused by news.
Breakout trading: breakouts (breakdowns) do occur in any time frame. Popular charts for breakout traders are 5 minute and 15 minute charts. The holding period is anywhere from a few seconds (breakout scalp) up to the end of the day. Breakout trading means to buy stock after it has broken out above a certain price. Vice versa for shorts.
Pullback trading: Pullback trading is the opposite of breakout trading. Pullback traders are looking for stock prices to pull back a significant enough amount (usually into support) in order for them to justify an entry (vice versa for shorts). Personally I am more of a breakout trader since I like the confirmation of the stock prices' movement that I get thru the breakout; although pullback trading often has the smaller stops though. The holding period is usually a few seconds up to an hour.
Scalping: Scalping describes "ultra short term" trading. Scalpers try to take advantage of very small price movements and sell their shares immediately when they have a big enough profit or the stock isn't moving in their direction or goes against them.
Cutting the spread: Cutting the spread can be seen as a scalping variety. Cutting the spread means to take advantage of the spread (the price difference between the bid and the ask price). It means to buy a stock on the bid side and to sell it immediately afterward on the ask side for a small profit. Since the decimalization of the markets this type of trading has certainly become much more difficult because spreads have gotten much smaller.
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