The digital age of financial investment has arrived. Individual traders and investors can now bypass brokers and enter the formerly rarefied arena of the major Wall Street players with just a PC, strengthened by their own knowledge and trading ability. As one financial writer recently quipped, "Electronic day trading is really starting to click." In fact, trading online is fast, redefining the entire concept of individual investing. As Dave Pettit, a Wall Street Journal editor, noted, "The rush to go online promises to dramatically change the nature of individual investing both for the investors themselves and the businesses that cater to them." For individuals, online investing has meant a chance to take full responsibility for their finances: you execute your own trades without a broker to hold your hand. The Internet has also provided a radically cheaper way to invest.

One hundred years ago the French novelist Marcel Proust observed, "The more things change the more they remain the same." This observation is also true as it relates to trading. Whether it is done digitally or conventionally, trading is the ultimate psychological chess game based on brains, guts, and timing. Trading profits are cultivated in the rich soil of market discipline, strict money management, and strategy.

No day trading system is perfect; however, the use of one is critical for trading success. To be successful, a day trading system must be profitable, consistent, and personal. In short, it must be guarded by an overriding and all-encompassing trading strategy that takes into account the real-time characteristics of dynamic markets: debilitating emotions and ambiguous technical indicators.

The key question then is, How does the trader create a real-time profitable day trading strategy that conforms to the unique psychological and methodological needs of the individual, given the special technical and psychological demands of the arena in which he is forced to perform? Historically, books on day trading stocks offer either a survey of systems and indicators that may be used for short-term trading or a compilation of specific techniques that are presented in the abstract, a hypothetical offering at best. When the psychology of trading is introduced into the discussion, it is typically mentioned in passing or as a theoretical construct rather than as an underlying and integral aspect of any winning market approach.

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