Day Trading Should Be Boring To Succeed

ByOddmund Groette Day Trading

I have been day trading since 2001. And I can assure you that successful day trading is mostly not what it looks like.

When people first hear “day trading,” they often think about fast charts, quick decisions, constant action, and some kind of special screen-reading ability.

But in my experience, this is not where the real edge is.

The traders I have mixed with over the years all used strict trading rules. I have yet to find a successful chart reader (however, this might be due to selection bias).

Trading is not about flashy charts, action, news, or having 6 monitors. Not even having a gaming computer.

I would assume many would find it boring.

It is the preparation. The checklists (I had and have many). The rules. The patience. The ability to do the same simple thing again and again. The willingness to wait when nothing is there. The discipline to not add complexity just because you feel like you should be doing more.

This is why I like to call it “boring”. In this case, boring means repeatable.

But by repeating something that works, you start gaining confidence. You get confidence by consistency.

I also think many traders make the game harder than it needs to be. They keep adding indicators, setups, filters, opinions, news, and new ideas. And not to mention buying better computers and more screens.

But in almost all cases, it just creates more decisions. And more decisions create more room for mistakes.

A simple system is easier to follow, review, and improve. Perhaps more importantly, it is normally easier to trust when things get uncomfortable.

Up until 2018, I did all my trading from this 2006 Dell laptop. Not exactly the most powerful.

Day trading is boring
Day trading is boring

When I was trading prop, I opened and closed positions every day using a very simple VBA script a friend of mine wrote in 2001. Using DDE links from Sterlingtrader, the software, I sent orders based on positions and time. That was it.

Heck, I didn’t even manage to rewrite the VBA code for newer versions of Excel, and I was stuck using Excel 2003 for years.

But it worked, and this was certainly not my limitation (my risk aversion was).

Focus on backtesting, rules, and consistency, and start from there. You don’t need anything advanced.

I’ve got an Msc from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh (1996), in addition a to a business administration degree the Norwegian School of Management (BI – 1994). Did my mandatory military service in between.

After university, I worked two years as an auditor (1996-1998).

I co-founded Aksjeforum.com in 1998/99 - one of the first websites about trading and investing in Norway. It was later acquired by Digi.no in 2001.

I have written 4 books about trading (in Norwegian). One of them has sold 30,000 copies, a record for a financial book in Norway.

From 2001 until 2018 full-time independent prop trader (Series 7 in 2001) and investor.

2018-today: Investor, writer, analyst.

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