n. Internet-based stock market trading in which individual investors quickly buy and sell equities to take advantage of short-term trends, and then sell most if not all of their holdings before the end of the day.
1999
As the go-go stock market keeps go-going, day trading looks powerfully seductive. 'Who wouldn't want to work at home in front of their computers and retire at 40?' says Philip Feigin, executive director of the North American Securities Administrators Association . . . The problem, he says, is that a deluge of largely unskeptical media coverage has so 'glamorized' day trading that people are ignoring its dangers. Fewer than one in 10 actually make money doing it, according to some experts. 'If you want to gamble,' Feigin advises, 'go to Las Vegas. The food is better.'
1999
Market reforms and access to the Internet have created a whole new breed of trader. Only an estimated 15,000 earn a living by day trading, but they are leaving their mark on the market.
1996 (earliest)
Day trading is also attracting the analysis-driven baby boomers, says Paul D. Garverick, on-line editor of the Chicago-based American Association of Individual Investors.
"They are active researchers driven by the on-line services and the Internet," says Mr. Garverick. "They've discovered they can do pretty well on their own, so why take the risk of getting laid off?"
"They are active researchers driven by the on-line services and the Internet," says Mr. Garverick. "They've discovered they can do pretty well on their own, so why take the risk of getting laid off?"
The non-Internet version of the term day trading has been around for quite a while, with the OED showing an earliest citation from 1954 (and day trader from 1953).