Swing trading is basically trading over the medium to long term, as apposed to intraday trading which as the name suggests, means you are in and out of your investment in the same day. Swing trading gets its name from the nature of the trades, the price of any commodity, stock, equity or currency pair swings up and down and never moves in a straight line, so the idea is to buy and sell at the pivotal points that the investment “swings” at. If you look at this on a chart you will see this clearly, they are sometimes referred to as peaks and troughs and the basic idea is to sell at the peak and buy at the trough, although it is not nearly as simple as that.

Swing trading is some trader’s investment strategy and the way they trade. The time periods can be anything from days to months but the basic principals are the same. There is a difference is the amount of money you need to hold your position, so the longer the time frames the more funds you will need. Other system traders will trade much shorter time frames and never hold a position overnight.

Whichever type of investment you are looking for, whether it is a long term stock investment or a short term currency trade, it is not to be taken lightly. All investments carry a certain amount of risk, including some very high risk leveraged investments where it is possible to lose more than you invest! For this reason these should be only undertaken by people with experience or with the guidance of a professional brokerage firm.

There are various commodity, currency and swing trading systems available for sale. A lot of information is available online free of charge too. Some traders will trade from what are known as fundamentals, which is basically news and economics, such information as a countries gross domestic product or unemployment figures will be the information they are looking at. In the case of individual stocks this is more likely to be quarterly sales figures and predicated growth. Other traders employ a technical investment strategy. This is the analysis of price action using charts and graphs and often involves a lot of trading software to help analysis of the data. These traders are looking at information the buying and selling stock volume, speed of price movement and then trying to pick those times when the shares or the commodities are over bought or over sold, an attempt to predict the turning point of the peak or the trough, the secret to a successful swing trade.