What Are The Pros And Cons of Intraday vs Swing Trading

Nov 23, 2022

Hello traders,

There is not such a good or bad timeframe.

Like cooking, everything depends on how you use the ingredients for your meals.

Intraday timeframes

Pros

• Earlier entries
  
• Earlier exits => losers are smaller compared to losers with SWING trades
  
• You make your daily goals earlier
  
• With Intraday trading, we're not impacted by contracts expiration, rollover, over-weekend, overnight fees
  
• It's rarely boring (especially with indices trading)
  
• Leverage isn't needed
  
• Perfect for beginners or small capital
  

Cons

• More in/out entries => you have to enter, exit, enter, exit until the real move happen
  
• You have to be more reactive and accurate when taking a position or exiting.
  

Swing timeframes

Pros

• More time to react and prepare
  
• We don't need to be too accurate with our entries and exits
  
• You're less impacted by news/events/rumours/tweets - They have a real visible impact on intraday but generally don't change a thing for the swing trend
  

Cons

• Bigger drawdown by design
  
• Forces to hold trades over multiple days/weeks.
  In a range, we pay a lot in funding/rollover fees before the real move happens.
  Being double digits percent down because of fees isn't pleasant.
  
  
• Big capital required to afford to lose a few percentages sometimes with those trading fees
  
  
• 1 click takes 5 seconds.
  Then you wait and wait and wait and wait, and then look on Twitter for ideas to invalidate your entries.
  When your favorite guru shares a contrary setup, you follow his/her call and wreck yourself.
  
  You really need patience with SWING trades.
  If the patience for you is an issue, I'd stick with Intraday.
  

Have a great day
Dave