If you think that intraday trading sounds very exciting and daring, you may be mistaken. In reality, intraday trading is largely about how to move ahead with discipline in a variety of areas. One such area of discipline is in the selection of stocks to trade intraday. Remember, you cannot just trade intraday on any stock. It is a conscious choice. You have to be very selective. But let us spend a moment on understanding what intraday trading is all about. It is all about initiating and closing out your trades on the same day. It can either be a buy transaction closed out by an equivalent sell transaction or the other way round. For example if you buy 500 shares of Reliance in the morning at Rs.1,100 and sell it by evening at Rs.1,120, then you can book a profit of Rs.10,000 (500x20) intraday. This trade does not result in any delivery as your net position at the end of the day is zero. Therefore, the intraday trade has nothing to do with your demat account and it is entirely delivery agnostic. You can also sell in the morning and buy back in the evening if you believe that the stock is likely to go down. If you want to short sell stocks (without delivery), then the only way you can do it in rolling settlements mode is intraday. But remember to close out such short positions intraday without fail as it would lead to auctions otherwise. You broker may have his RMS but the job is eventually yours.

Coming back to the topic of selection of stocks for intraday trading, let us focus on how to pick stocks for day trading in India. Is there anything like a best intraday stocks list or a list of top 10 stocks for intraday trading? While such a list could be a very dynamic list and subject to constant change, here is a very fundamental approach to shortlisting stocks for intraday trading. Your mantra should be to focus on liquidity, impact cost, ownership structure, chart patterns and news sensitivity.