What is day trading and how to start from scratch?

Day trading means buying and selling an asset on the same day, seeking profit from short-term price swings. You're not investing for the coming years: you're trading movements that last minutes or hours.

What you need to get started

• An account on a trading platform. On Syphex it's free and takes 1 minute.
• A small starting amount: the minimum deposit is US$ 10 and each trade starts at US$ 1.
• A practice routine on the demo account, with US$ 10,000 in virtual funds.

What your first trade looks like

Pick an asset you follow (Bitcoin and EUR/USD are the most common among beginners), decide how much to invest, choose whether you think it will rise or fall and the expiration time. Then log the result: recording every trade is what turns luck into a method.

Mistakes that hold beginners back

• Increasing your trade size after a loss to "recover fast".
• Trading many assets at once without understanding any of them.
• Skipping the demo account and learning with real money.

How long it takes to learn

There's no guaranteed timeline. The sensible path is to train for weeks on demo, move to minimum amounts and only increase your trade size once your results are consistent. Day trading carries real risk of capital loss.