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According to Wall Street Access, an online broker that caters to day traders, Bill Huggin is a self-taught day trader. He learned the old-fashioned way: by trial and error. In the five years he’s been trading, he has learned how to survive and even thrive on the ups and downs of the market. Now he supports his family with his trading profits and runs a Web site where other traders-from novice to expert-can learn from his experience in the market. Huggin places about ten trades a day.

The strategy he follows involves searching out volatile stocks and getting in-and out-fast. He says he rarely stays in a position for more than ten minutes! In making his moves, he looks at technical data to find opportunities like reflex rallies or breakouts.

Mostly, Huggin trades technology stocks; almost everything he trades is on the Nasdaq. “I watch for opportunities where I can bottom fish-find a stock that has plummeted to a low and buy it real quick. If it doesn’t turn around right away, within minutes, I sell anywhere from half to all of my position to cut my losses. Similarly, if the stock goes up, I will sell half and let some ride.”

Huggin thinks it’s critical for day traders to learn how to take a small loss. “It’s better to get out with a manageable loss and live to trade another day.” One strategy he recommends is going short against the box. Basically, you are long and short the same stock at the same time. (Note: You are long by actually owning a position in the stock; you are short by selling shares of the stock that you borrow from your broker.) When you want to exit the short-against-the-box position, you buy long shares of the stock.

Be sure to tell your broker you want to be short against the box. Now you are hedged (your risk has been reduced). What this lets you do is sell a long position at any time without having to wait for an up bid. This is a powerful day trading strategy because it allows you to play a potential down move in a stock-that is, the stock you are short against the box-on an intraday basis at anytime. That can be critical to success as a day trader.

Not everyone makes money. Another day trader, from Glastonbury, Connecticut, has had a tough time hanging on. When he began trading stocks online from his home in 1996, his wife had recently died and he had quit a job in the computer industry to spend more time with his eight-year-old daughter. After taking a course from Broadway Trading, he moved into day trading.

Two or three months later, however, he thought that he was losing too much money, perhaps because he was trading from home without the presence of trading colleagues who could offer valuable advice. So in September 1997, he began trading at a day trading office in Hartford. Even that move didn’t produce the results he was banking on. Discouraged, he took a job with a financial services company. “In terms of making a profit,” he said, “I would have been better off putting the money in a mutual fund.”

Even successful day traders seem to be able to stand the pressure cooker atmosphere only so long. One longtime day trader said his goal was to make a million dollars and retire at 30, when he might become a teacher. Another successful day trader is also reconsidering his priorities.

His father taught him how to chart stocks when he was 11; and he now spends most of his time teaching other day traders instead of trading himself. He said: “Before I lost my father, he had four heart attacks and triple bypass surgery. I still have a need to day trade but not at the level I used to.”