Embarking on the journey of day trading in the U.S. stock market can be both thrilling and daunting, especially for beginners. Many new traders experience the frustration of losing money, often due to a lack of understanding about when to apply different trading strategies. This guide is designed to provide you with a strategic timetable, breaking down the trading day into key periods and identifying which strategies tend to work best at each time. The goal? To help you target making $500 per day through effective trading.

Understanding the Trading Day

The U.S. stock market operates from 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM Eastern Standard Time (EST). This translates to 6:30 AM to 1:00 PM Pacific Standard Time (PST), and here are conversions for a couple of other time zones:

• Central Standard Time (CST): 8:30 AM to 3:00 PM
• Mountain Standard Time (MST): 7:30 AM to 2:00 PM

During these 6.5 hours of market activity, opportunities to utilize various trading strategies arise. Here’s how you can schedule your day for optimal trading:

Trading Strategies Timeline

1. Open Range Breakout + Earnings (9:30 AM - 10:30 AM EST)
   • Purpose: Capture significant moves resulting from the initial volatility in the market.
   • Strategy: Identify a range the stock price is moving within during the first 15 to 30 minutes. When the price breaks out of this range with increased volume, enter a trade in the direction of the breakout.
   • Stock list: pre-market earnings, yesterday post market earnings.
2. Momentum / Mean Reversion (10:30 AM - 1:30 PM EST)
   • Market fist
   • Purpose: Take advantage of stocks that are moving strongly in one direction (momentum) or capitalize on stocks returning to their average price (mean reversion).
   • Strategy: For momentum, buy stocks showing strong upward trends or short sell stocks on a downward spiral. For mean reversion, look for stocks that have deviated significantly from their typical value and trade expecting a return to that average.
3. Relative Strength / Weakness (12:30 PM - 4:00 PM EST)
   • Purpose: Identify and trade stocks that are performing significantly better or worse than the market as a whole.
   • Strategy: Compare stocks to overall market indices and peers. Use tools like the relative strength index (RSI) to find overbought or oversold stocks.

Visualizing the Strategy Timeline

[Insert Infographic Here: Timeline of Day Trading Strategies]

Detailed Strategy Breakdown

1. Open Range Breakout

This strategy focuses on the price range established during the first few minutes of the trading day. By placing trades that follow the breakout direction, traders can capture significant moves spurred by overnight news and early market reactions.

2. Momentum / Mean Reversion

During the late morning to early afternoon, markets can show clear trends or pull back to mean prices. Trading during these times requires keen observation of price action and volume to gauge the strength of the trend or the likelihood of a reversion.

3. Relative Strength / Weakness