............................................................................................................................................................................Racer said:and how often is that possible?
Well nobody knows that BUT you have to put the day into context to determine whether the market was already in an established trend. If that had been the Dow this week - in an established downtrend - I would have been looking for a short entry point. I would have stayed out at the begining since the market often rises after a prior down day and waited to have seen what happened. Once I took a view that it had peaked and was on the way down then I would have entered a short position. Exactly where and when is impossible to gauge when you take an individual day completely out of context.
If you take last Friday for example the market slid down on opening and then tried to break 10250 three times. When the third attempt failed I placed a stop sell short at 10200 reasoning that it would not be fulfilled if the market still kept trying to break resistance at 10250 but that it was highly likely to break down at some point therafter and if it breached 10200 it would probably head for 10100 where I next expected to see support. That's what happened except that it also breached 10100 on the way down.
On Thursday the market had drifted down on opening and so I took a short at 10340. I got stopped out at 10380 when it went up. Still looking for a short I tried again at 10300 and got stopped out again at 10340. My third attempt was at 10381 and the market subsequently fell back and I finally closed out at 10220. My first two shorts cost me 80 points by my third short made me 161 points so I made a net gain of 81 points via day trades on that day. I would agree that this is only likely when a trend is well established, as has been the case with the Dow over the past 3 weeks, but that is when supplementary tactical day trades can really work.
At the end of the day we all have to evolve our own trading strategy and use what works for us as individuals. I'm fundamentally a swing trader but tactical day trades, when a market trend has been established, can also be additional icing on the cake.