What Really Makes A Day Trader Successful

A successful day trader is someone who follows a trading plan.

Your trading plan tells you when to enter a trade, and when to exit.  An entry point.  An exit point - either a target or just to get stopped out.  Parabolic SAR, lower bollinger, natural support and resistance, volatility stop.  Whatever.

Any trader must understand the timeless law of probability.  That with a positive bias and a sensible approach to money-management (cutting your losses and letting your profits run), eventually you'll come out ahead.  

What makes day trading so challenging is the speed.  You simply execute trades faster, and compound your profits faster - which is why we do it.

That's why a day trader is NOT a stressed-out, valium-swallowing, adrenaline junkie who lives from one minute to the next.  

A good (i.e. profitable) day trader knows that it's just another trade.  It's all just statistics in action.

The important point here is consistency.  Like the heads / tails example, the one time you don't take a trade is when the market takes off and never looks back.  

Day trading is boring.  Keep it that way.