Investors looking to earn quick, easy profits that generate supplemental income in the here and now are using swing trading as a way of making it happen. And by the end of this in-depth guide on how to get started with short-term swing trading strategies, you can too!
Swing trading itself is an inherently short-term trading strategy – compared to position trading or long-term investing. But while some swing trades occur over the course of a few weeks, the strategy we’ll talk about today will help you complete trades over the course of a few days!
The best part? The system we use is foolproof – and has earned investors 10x the returns of the S&P 500 for the last 22 years. And, it takes just a few minutes a day – no need to sit in front of a screen playing around with complex technical indicators for hours a day.
Sounds too good to be true? It’s not – once you try the system out yourself you’ll wish you’d started sooner. Let’s dive in!
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What is Short-Term Swing Trading, Exactly?
What is a swing trade, exactly? As the name suggests, it’s a type of trading strategy where you “swing” in and out of trades – buying low and selling high over the course of a few days to capitalize on short-term trends. Or, in the case of shorting a stock, buying high and selling low. Either way, you’re taking advantage of the short-term fluctuations along a stock’s overall price trajectory.
The key is to identify stocks or assets that have had sudden price swings or movements, which can indicate that the asset will continue to trend in the same direction. This is done purely based on technical swing trading indicators – as the fundamentals are irrelevant to swing traders. A company can be steadily falling to the bottom, and you can still make a killing swing trading the stock along the temporary ebbs and flows in its stock price!
Typically, swing trades occur over the course of a few days to a few weeks. This means you are exposed to some risk after hours – but it also means you aren’t tied to your computer and forced to close out your positions before the market closes, like with day trading. This means it is typically a more stress-free approach to investing that requires less time.
However, since you’re here specifically looking for short-term swing trading strategies, we’ll talk about how you can incorporate this investment style into your daily regimen – entering and exiting positions over the course of no more than a couple of days. Ready to learn how to get started? Keep reading!
The Best Way to Get Started With Short-Term Swing Trading: Follow This Strategy for Quick & Easy Profits
Below, we’ll walk you step by step to getting started with short-term swing trading. This is something you can do as a complete beginner – but the more experience you have with investing in general, the shorter your learning curve will be. With that said, let’s talk about step one – learning about the basic principles of swing trading.
First, Learn the Basic Principles of Trading the Short-Term Swings in a Stock’s Price
There are no shortcuts for learning to swing trade – other than investing in a paid course, like one of the options available here at VectorVest. Why would you pay for information that you could potentially find online for free? Simple – it saves you a ton of time, you get the best information from a reliable source, and you’re more likely to take action on what you learn!
Otherwise, we encourage you to read our guide to swing trading for beginners. There, you’ll learn the basics of small account trading, how to pick stocks for swing trading, and how the market works in general. You’ll gain a better understanding of what affects the price of a stock, and how you can use that information to identify and validate trends that you can take advantage of.
From there, you can take what you’ve learned and put it to practice with paper trading. This is essentially trading the stock market in real time – but using fake money. This allows you to get real experience without the risk of blowing up your account with real money. Doing this helps you feel more confident when you actually put your cash on the line.
Use a Stock Analysis Software to Eliminate Guesswork, Human Error, and Emotion
Sure, you can learn how to analyze a stock before buying using traditional technical analysis tactics – such as tracking moving averages and setting up screeners manually. But why work harder when you could work smarter?
With accurate, reliable stock analysis software, you don’t only save yourself hours of work every day. You also increase your probability of success – eliminating guesswork, human error, and emotion from your strategy. And there is no better choice than VectorVest – the best swing trading platform the industry has ever seen. It tells you what to buy, when to buy it, and when to sell it – helping you capture profits over the course of a few days with minimal work necessary. You’ll even gain insights into market sentiment so you know when conditions are favorable and when it may be better to sit on the sidelines.
You won’t have to stress over complex technical indicators or miss your window of opportunity. The tried and true system will simplify the stock market for you as it uses just three easy-to-understand ratings: relative value (RV), relative safety (RS), and relative timing (RT). By simply picking the stocks with the highest overall VST ratings, you’ll win more trades! And it gets even better because you can find your opportunities on autopilot…
Uncover Opportunities On Autopilot Through Our System
Are you wondering, what are the best stocks to swing trade today? VectorVest can tell you! With a traditional approach to swing trading short-term price fluctuations, you’d have to manually set up screeners based on your trading criteria. This isn’t just a lot of work – it’s not the most consistent way to find good opportunities.
Instead, you can pull up the top stock picks in VectorVest on any given day and find opportunities ripe for the plucking. Whether you’re looking for the big boomers on a given day or high-momentum stocks, or you’re looking for stocks in certain industries, there is a pre-configured list for your goals. We even offer a whole database of retirement stocks!
Finding your next play will never be something you stress over again – and neither will be timing the market. Here’s how VectorVest helps you find your entry and exit point.
Find Your Entry & Exit Point – and Automate the Trade through Stop Losses & Take Profit Orders
With swing trading, it’s all about timing. This is even more true when it comes to short-term swing trading strategies, where the window of opportunity is smaller. How do you know when to make your entry – and when to exit? You can rely on the RT rating for this.
It sits on a simple scale of 0.00-2.00 – with 1.00 being the average. Any stock with an RT rating trending above 1.00 has momentum behind it – and this indicates a good opportunity to get in. As the RT rating begins regressing back towards 1.00 and falls below it, it suggests the trend has weakened and is in the process of reversing.
To help eliminate costly errors with your timing, you can set stop losses and take profit orders. Stop losses trigger automatically when a stock’s price falls below a certain threshold, protecting you from getting stuck in a tanking stock. On the other hand, take profit orders execute automatically when a stock’s price reaches above a certain threshold – locking in your profits and preventing you from missing your window of opportunity. This also helps prevent you from getting emotional and greedy, trying to squeeze out an extra bit of profit only to lose it all overnight.
The best way to know when to sell swing trading, though, is by following the buy and sell recommendations VectorVest offers. Or better yet, use ProfitLocker Pro – another software we offer that helps you time your exit to perfection, getting out of positions with ample profit and minimizing painful losses. Learn more in our article on when to cut losses on a stock.
What if Your Trade Doesn’t Trigger a Stop Loss or Take Profit Order?
By following the advice above, you’ll be well on your way to earning quick and easy profits in the stock market. Mapping your plan out before you enter your position, and automating the trade through stop losses and take profit orders, will be a strategy you can just keep rinsing and repeating.
Sometimes, though, a stock’s price goes stagnant – and never ends up triggering one of your orders. In these cases, what should you do? If it’s been a week or longer and the price is remaining stagnant, it’s typically best to cut ties and move on to the next opportunity. Investing in the stock market is all about getting your capital to work for you – and if you’re not earning a return, you’re wasting precious time.
Parting Thoughts on Short-Term Swing Trading
Short-term swing trading is a quick and easy way to generate supplemental income in the present day – and can turn from a fun side hustle into a full-time source of income as your portfolio grows over time.
Hopefully, you feel confident about your next steps after reading this quick guide to getting started. Take the time to educate yourself on how swing trading works and arm yourself with the right tools – like VectorVest. If you’re still not quite sold, see the system in action yourself with a free stock analysis today. Once you see how brain-dead easy swing trading can be with our software, you’ll never go back to the old way of doing things!
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What you should do next…
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