A trading strategy is a set of decisions about which markets to trade, when to enter and exit, how long to hold a position and how much to risk on it. Strategies differ above all in their time horizon. At one end, investors who follow buy and hold keep their positions for years; at the other, day traders and scalpers close every trade within the same session, sometimes after only a few minutes.
The entries in this section explain the most common styles and the building blocks behind them: short-term approaches such as intraday trading and scalping, diversification as a way of spreading risk, the trading system as a rule set for consistent decisions, and performance as the yardstick for judging results.
The list is not exhaustive. No strategy works in every market phase, and every approach needs to be combined with sound risk management.