Swing Trading

Swing trading is a speculative style of trading that attempts to catch short to medium-term gains in a financial instrument over a few days up to a few weeks. Swing trading is based on technical analysis to find trading opportunities.

swing trading

How Swing Trading Works?

Swing trading aims to seize a portion of potential price movements. It seeks to identify the direction and size of a stock's next price movement. Afterward, swing traders enter positions and generate profits when everything goes to plan. Swing trading typically entails holding short or long positions for more than a trading session. A Swing trade can occur during trading sessions, but this is an uncommon result caused by incredibly volatile circumstances.

Since swing trading is dependent on steady, somewhat predictable ups and downs, swing trading is best done between bear markets and bull markets when the prices are stagnant and not trading upwards or downwards. 

Swing trader relies on technical tools to help them analyze the markets, including momentum indicators, market sentiment measures, price range tools, and charts. Technical analysis is the main tool used in this type of trading to find new opportunities. Analyzing patterns and trends of the prices is another way that swing traders use to generate more profits. Since swing trades are usually short-term, technical analysis is the most important tool used by traders to find trading opportunities. Their results can also be enhanced by the use of fundamental analysis.

A swing trader frequently scans the daily charts for trading opportunities. They may also monitor the 15-minute or 1-hour charts to determine the exact take-profit levels.

The key to the success of this strategy is to be interested in taking a portion of the anticipated price movement and then moving on to the following trading opportunity. Although swing traders can be successful in various assets, large-cap assets tend to be the ideal choices for them. 

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Since swing trading captures the majority of market movements, it maximizes the possibility of generating profits on the short run. Long-term trends are frequently missed by swing traders, who tend to focus only on the short-term trends.
Compared to day trading, swing trading does not take much time. Unexpected changes in the market can cause result in losing trades.
Trading can be made simpler by allowing swing traders to only use technical analysis.

About the author

Ziga Breznik is the owner and head of research at PublicFinanceInternational.org – he is an active investor in the forex, crypto and stock markets – he has seen trading platforms disappear along with his investments – especially during the “crypto boom”. Ziga learned the hard way that finding a reputable and trustworthy online brokerage is key to long-term success in the financial markets. He founded PublicFinanceInternational.org as a platform where he shares his research with one goal in mind: to provide unbiased and trustworthy online brokers reviews.