I know a friend who is trying to make a living off of day trading stocks which is looking at 1 minute and 5 minute charts while looking to make a quick buck before closing trades. It's a lot like playing poker for me because it's really about competing to take each other's money in a sense. I personally believe that it's senseless to be stuck to the monitor for long hours daily watching people's money rise and fall, but some still don't mind making a living off of it.
It really comes down to having a personal strategy and the best way to get one is to keep on practicing until there's some consistency. The traders will collectively cause the market to rise and fall for whatever reason, so it's all a bunch of risky speculation and making a living off of trying to predict how the chips will fall is an art.
How this applies to my personal preference is that I don't want to be a day trader. I want to be a swing trader and the expected time for practicing to become a pretty good one can be years, but the pay out with benefits for me is more worth it. I will keep on trying to model something profitable all the way to riches on a daily basis. It's pretty much all about coming up with a profitable set and forget model. I'm only caring about something that I can understand and model off of, which I have now so I'll be seeing where it takes me now. This pretty much means that I'll be having to make the most of my time optimally as possible.
