Day trading, active trading, and investing: What’s the difference?

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Make trades to initiate investments.

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So you’re ready to jump into the financial markets. Maybe it’s your first 401(k) plan, or there’s a company whose products you use and you’d like to own a few shares. But you hear so many terms—day trading, stock trading, investing, buy and hold—and now you’re confused and intimidated.

Let’s cut to the chase: The decision to trade versus invest is really about time horizons. A trade is typically short term. Consider “day traders,” who liquidate positions on the same day they initiate them, or “swing traders,” who hold positions for just days or weeks. Investors typically hold their positions for months, years, or decades.

Yup, that’s basically it. But why would you choose one over the other? It comes down to your long- and short-term objectives.

Short-term trading means hopping in and out of stocks to take advantage of current fundamental or technical trends, with an expectation that you’ll sell shares quickly when you achieve your objectives.

Consider two hypothetical scenarios:

These are the kinds of things that can move stock prices. Traders observe the markets, wait for an opportunity, and make a trade. They’re like a pilot who checks the speed and direction of the wind, then dials in the flight plan.

As a trader, you might look at one of these scenarios and decide to jump in. You’d start by laying out both your time horizon and your objective. Be specific. Something like:

“I’m looking for a price rise of $5 by the end of next week.”

With this trade, you’ve given yourself a profit objective (a $5 rise in the share price) and a time horizon (the end of next week). Because it’s a short-term trade, you’ll want to keep a close eye on it. If you get that $5 move, great. If not, you’ll need to reassess, and perhaps sell the shares and move on to the next trade.

But here’s an important note: In addition to the profit objective, most traders—those who tend to survive over the long term—give themselves a loss objective. Think of it as a “pain point” down below. For example, you might say:

“If the stock drops $3 from my purchase price, I’ll sell it and take the loss.”

It’s no fun to take a loss, but managing risk is an important part of trading. Even experienced traders have bad days when they lose money. The idea is to make enough on the winners to cover the losers and still come out ahead.

A long-term investor plans to hold a stock for years, often through bad and good, and tries not to let day-to-day ups and downs in the market sidetrack their decisions. Instead, they expect positives to outweigh negatives for many months or years to come. They don’t need the money back right away, either, meaning it has time to grow and to recover from any dips in the stock along the way.

Here are two hypothetical scenarios that might shape a long-term investor’s decisions:

These are among the top reasons people invest. You buy shares of stock, and each of those shares entitles you to a percentage of the company’s future profits.

But just because it’s a long-term investment doesn’t mean you can ignore your objectives and time horizon. You might say something like:

“I expect this company’s profit to grow 5% per year for the next 10 years.”

You’ll still want to keep an eye on your investment—at least periodically—to make sure the position stays in line with your objectives and time horizons. If the company makes a change, say, to its product lineup, or its overall growth plan, you should think about whether you want to hang onto it as an investment. If you bought shares because the company pays a nice dividend, you might consider selling if the company encounters rough times and lowers the payment.

There’s a common thread between trading and investing: If something changes, or if your objectives don’t pan out, you should revisit your decision. And be honest with yourself.

Many new traders—and some veterans, too—have a hard time with this. Suppose, for example, you jump into a stock right before a product launch, but its release lands with a thud. Do you then say to yourself, “Well, this stock is going to be great over the long term, so I’ll hang on?”

That’s turning a trade into an investment, but arguably for the wrong reasons. Are you being honest, or are you being stubborn?

Here’s an alternative case: Suppose you identified a long-term investment, but a week after you bought it, shares jumped 10%. It might be tempting to take your profits and either move on or wait for the price to drop so you can buy it again.

That’s turning your investment into a trade. Again, are you being honest with yourself? And what if you never get another opportunity to buy at your original price? Will you be kicking yourself for having gotten out too quickly?

Trading can be a part of your overall investing plan. And investing requires you to make trades in order to acquire those assets.

But that doesn’t mean trading is investing and investing is trading. Far from it. Trading is about identifying short-term opportunities, while investing typically targets the long term. When you buy a stock—or any asset—make sure you know what you’re looking to achieve, how much risk you’re willing to tolerate, and how long you think it will take.

If you’re unsure, start where many traders and investors do: Learn the difference between fundamental analysis (looking at company earnings, financial ratios, and economic impacts) and technical analysis (using chart patterns to identify trading opportunities). Short-term traders typically keep an eye on the technicals, whereas long-term (buy-and-hold) investors consider the fundamentals, or look at a blend of fundamental and technical metrics to guide their decisions.