Making a profit out of trading the markets is about balancing a massive number of factors and signals to make the most of out of a given situation. The shorter the time frame, the more quickly you need to make these decisions, so when it comes to day trading you need to be fast, and right, as often as possible.

Any book that offers advice on how to trade the markets will give you the ins and outs of the many technical indicators around. They will also suggest various simple trading methods that you could use to make trades based on these indicators, these can start with things as relatively simple as trading the crossover of a Moving Average or Stochastic.

Now, on paper, these simple methods work, but in short time frames they're potentially very expensive, and they're also nearly useless when it comes to ranging markets. After all, if the price is crossing over the Moving Average line repeatedly, you're going to lose money just trading it up and down all day.

The art of trading, in fact, is knowing when the signal is strong enough to go and stay in, and when to get out. The common error that many people make is that they try to ride their profits, but the market turns and they end up losing out on potentially significant gains, so it's not just about entry, it's about knowing when to cash out.

That said, getting the entry points is vital, and with a lot of professional traders getting computerised help when it comes to balancing all the potential indicators, systems that help you get signals can be invaluable, if you use them correctly.

Of course, however, a wise trade should never allow the system to make decisions for them because it's your money, and blindly following a system may work sometimes, but it could also go wrong and be very expensive. Spread betting experts CMC Markets always recommend that traders should know their market and their indicators inside out before making any trades, and it's sound advice. That's not to say you shouldn't get additional help from computer packages, just that you should always know what you're doing before you invest, either in the markets, or in the software.