Recently, while watching the market, I noticed that many people get stuck in long-term positions and then start looking for short-term stock trading opportunities. To be honest, short-term trading does have its appeal, but the threshold is higher than most people think.

At its core, short-term trading is about using capital to rotate quickly and profit from price spreads. Usually, you enter and exit within one or two days. The advantage of this style is a clear pace and fast capital flow. The downside is that it demands extremely strict discipline and risk control—once you misjudge, losses can come very quickly.

To do well in short-term stock trading, choosing the right stocks is actually the most critical first step. In my own experience, short-term trading doesn’t need to rely on fundamentals. Instead, you should focus on three things: whether there is a theme, whether the trading volume is sufficient, and whether the stock price has large fluctuations.

Themes are the most important. What the market is paying attention to is where capital flows. When trading volume is high, stock prices are more likely to move. For example, in the AI and semiconductor theme, as long as the story is still going, stocks like NVDA and SMCI get traded again and again. Without a theme, even the best companies can easily turn into dead money, which is simply not suitable for short-term trading.

Insufficient trading volume is a major taboo for short-term trading. The most unbearable feeling is managing to buy but not being able to sell, so I will definitely pick stocks with enough trading volume. That way, the bid-ask spread is smaller, entering and exiting won’t move the stock price, and you can capture opportunities or cut losses in time.

You can only profit from the price spread if there are big fluctuations. Compared with Walmart and Tesla, Walmart is just too stable and really isn’t suitable for short-term trading. Instead, it’s those stocks that gap up due to earnings reports or news events that create short-term opportunities. This is especially clear around earnings announcements: NETFLIX beats expectations and gaps up immediately, while META misses expectations and gaps down—these are exactly the time points short-term traders love most.

Based on these characteristics, the most popular short-term trading targets in the market today can roughly be divided into five categories. The first is AI and semiconductors—this is the clearest current capital mainline, and stocks like NVDA, AMD, and SMCI are all worth paying attention to. The second is high-volatility themed stocks. They have bigger swings and more opportunities, but liquidity is not as good as that of leading stocks, so you need to watch for slippage when entering and exiting. The third is stocks related to cryptocurrencies. COIN and MSTR are highly correlated with Bitcoin. If you want to participate in crypto volatility but don’t want to trade the coins directly, you can consider this category.

The fourth category is high-profile leading stocks, such as TSLA and PLTR. These are driven by retail investor sentiment and have enough liquidity and discussion every day. The fifth is event-driven stocks. ORCL is a typical example: it usually doesn’t move much, but once the earnings report comes out, implied volatility can surge sharply, making gaps of over 5% likely.

To be honest, the biggest test of short-term trading is still discipline. You need clear logic for when to enter and exit, and you must set proper stop-losses. Treat stocks as tools rather than a belief. U.S. stocks are especially suitable for short-term trading because trading volume is large and there are no transaction fees. Also, being allowed to buy and sell the same stock multiple times in a single day makes things even more flexible.

If you want to try short-term trading, I suggest starting with a demo account to get familiar with the trading targets’ volatility patterns—especially TSLA, NVDA, and SMCI, which are all regulars in short-term trading. After you’ve figured out the playbook, then trade with a small amount of capital. The barrier to short-term stock trading isn’t actually that high, but to survive and make money, discipline is your greatest weapon.