Traits of a Successful Intraday Traders

Getting experienced in the profession of trading takes time. We have to suffer losses, evaluate our decisions daily and grow steadily. While growth takes time, we can take advantage of the traders who have already been there and done it all. Here is a list of the common attributes that are found in successful intraday traders:

Quality Over Quantity: A quality found in many of the successful traders is that they trade less, but they trade well. One thing we need to understand as traders is that we cannot have it all. We should have a pre-filtered list of stocks and only concentrate on them while trading. If we jump on everything, we will have nothing. We shouldn't enter a trade before we’re 100% sure about the price action which is about to occur. Do not overtrade. We as humans are likely to get carried away. Setting up prior price targets will help us follow discipline.
Stick to Liquid Stocks: Don't trade on illiquid stocks. Stocks with a volume of less than 50,000 shares per day should be strictly avoided for intraday trading. Choose stocks having low bid-ask spreads. One can trade in these stocks with narrow margins, keep your costs low, and exit positions quickly in unfavorable situations. The Nifty 50 and the Nifty Next 50 indices contain a total of the top 100 stocks that are traded on the NSE. These are also the stocks which have the maximum liquidity. We can filter such stocks for our trading list.
Find Stocks With High Volatility: An intraday trader should choose stocks with high volatility. He should trade the stocks which have daily volatility higher than the Average Daily Volatility. There is a good probability that these stocks will show good momentum and you will get ample opportunities for trading in those.
Patience and consistency: Patience is the key to success. There are days where we don’t get the price at which we want to trade in any of our stocks. We need to be patient and not rush into trades. One needs to be consistent with their approach. For example, if we’re using a Moving Averages strategy, then we should keep using it for a consistent amount of time and only after that we may generate profits. Switching between different patterns just because we suffered a loss in the first few attempts is not a good idea. A great deal of consistency is required to make money out of the markets, which can be achieved only with experience.
Stick to the strategy: When everything is going in one's favour, it is easy to overhype ourselves and get carried away, but when trades go against our plans, the morale of a trader goes for a toss. Successful traders never stop believing in themselves even when the times are rough on them. A proper trading strategy should be devised and the trader must stick to it. Hopping around different strategies with each unsuccessful trade will never give desired results.
Accuracy of successful trades are high: Lose but win more is one of the mantras of a successful trader. We have seen that many traders try to maintain a 7:3 ratio, i.e., 7 winning trades, and 3 losing trades, giving a 70% success rate. This is why a successful trader doesn’t get into a trade unless he/she is 100% sure about it.
No loans taken for trading purposes: A trader should never borrow money from someone else to enter the equity markets. This decision is the worst thing a trader can do to himself. It is doomed to fail.
If a trade goes wrong, book your losses and don’t cling on to hope: Booking losses as soon as we realize that a mistake has been made by us is a key attribute of a successful trader. This attribute helps them to be ruthless and limit their losses.