Day traders are a spe­cial breed of ani­mals from the investors and swing or posi­tion traders. To them, there is a rou­tine through­out the day they notice and take advan­tage of them. Each seg­ment of the trad­ing hours has spe­cial mean­ing. When it comes trad­ing, these traders know when they are at their best and when they will not make a dime.

Floor traders are the best at know­ing the rou­tine of the mar­ket. The same human nature shows up in the every­day life. Humans love rou­tine, even the peo­ple who are never do the same things twice or abhor nor­malcy and ordi­nary, they do have their own rou­tine in another aspect of their life. So even in trad­ing, the stocks and exchanges show their sim­i­lar­i­ties day after day, even in a chaotic world in finan­cial mar­kets, there are sub­tleties that help these traders profit from the markets.

Here are some of the known facts about mar­kets in general:

1. Vol­ume — Most of the par­tic­i­pa­tion are around the open­ing and the clos­ing hours of the day’s ses­sion, espe­cially on days where there are eco­nomic or com­pany news pend­ing. The more impor­tant the eco­nomic news, the more the vol­ume, such as Fed­eral Reserve meet­ings. Vol­ume and volatil­ity increases exponentially.

2. Price — There are cer­tain prices where traders will par­tic­i­pate in large num­bers such as new highs or new lows. These areas come to be sup­port or resis­tance, dri­ving more traders into the fray. When these prices are near, expect this action to become routine.

3. Time — Dif­fer­ent times of the trad­ing hours bring dif­fer­ent types of volatil­ity and traders. Open­ing and clos­ings see many day traders enter­ing and exit­ing the mar­kets while half way in the ses­sion will see less day traders as lunch time brings quiet time. The day is usu­ally divided into 60 minute incre­ments (hence the pop­u­lar use of the 60-minute charts by day and swing traders). These time slots mark an impor­tant rou­tine of the day. For exam­ple, the first 60 min­utes show high vol­ume with many emo­tional buy­ing and sell­ing to due mar­ket imbal­ance caused by news before the mar­ket open­ing. The sec­ond 60-minutes usu­ally see the vol­ume decreas­ing. This time slot also deter­mines the direc­tion of the mar­ket for the dayâ”either con­tin­u­ing the direc­tion set by the first 60 min­utes or revers­ing the direc­tion. The last hour also give clues to the fol­low­ing day. But due to news inter­rupt­ing overnight momen­tum, it’s more dif­fi­cult to use it as an indicator.

4. Day of the week — Depend­ing on the day of the week where swing traders may ini­ti­ate their posi­tions at the begin­ning of the week and exit at the end of the week. For oth­ers, watch­ing the begin­ning of the week to see the tone of the mar­kets that may play out the rest of the week. In doing so, the day traders may observe and trade accord­ing the week. Mon­days tends to be low in vol­ume as the week­end slowly fades bring­ing traders back to their work. Wednes­days tend to find the tone for the rest of the week with a trend­ing day. Fri­days tend to reverse on the entire week’s direc­tion. Many swing and day traders will usu­ally exit their posi­tions, tak­ing prof­its made from the week’s gains.

5. Month — The begin­ning and end of the month pro­vides more volatil­ity than in between. Why? Account­ing pur­poses, per­haps, where insti­tu­tions maneu­ver their assets. There is ten­dency for vol­ume to appear greater at the first few days of the month as well as the last few days of the month with more con­vic­tion in the direc­tion. Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber lately have become the turn­ing point of the mar­kets, chang­ing direc­tions, espe­cially from down­trend to uptrend. The crashes in recent his­tory have taken place in these two months and tend to be the lows of the year.

6. Sea­son — In gen­eral, the sum­mer pro­vides the least liq­uid­ity due to peo­ple in gen­eral going on vaca­tion. Dur­ing the rest of the year, there healthy vol­ume sus­tains the trend. Dur­ing the fall just up until Christ­mas will see a rise in vol­ume and bull­ish trends.