What can we trade?
Day trading can be applied across a wide range of asset classes, but not every market is worth your time. Two things matter above all else: liquidity, so you can get in and out efficiently, and volatility, so there is meaningful price movement to capitalize on. The markets below meet both criteria.
Futures
To start, futures are standardized contracts representing an agreement to buy or sell an asset at a set price on a future date. These are versatile, as you can trade commodities like oil, as well as derivatives based on indexes like the S&P 500. This is one of the most common ways to trade, as futures contracts are often very liquid and open up to nearly 24 hours a day. A common way to trade futures is through your own brokerage account or prop firms, which we will cover in a subsequent section.
Stocks
Stocks, or equities, are also common to trade. They allow you partial ownership, or equity, in a company; stock price movement broadly reflects the financial health, performance, and future earnings potential of the underlying company... Trading these is usually based on specific factors that influence a company, such as business cycles or surrounding of a new product launch. You can trade these through most brokerage accounts like Fidelity or Charles Schwab.
Options
Options grant the holder the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an asset at a predetermined price within a set timeframe prior to a denoted expiration. You can trade and gain exposure to many types of assets, including stocks, foreign currencies, and futures, through options, and there are a few different reasons to trade these. You can hedge against stocks that you may have in order to reduce downside risk, generating returns as the underlying position declines in value. Options offer leverage, meaning small price moves in the underlying asset result in magnified percentage gains or losses. Options are widely accessible to a broad financial class and can be traded with as little as one dollar, and are available through many common brokerage accounts.
Digital Assets
Cryptocurrencies are digital assets that operate on decentralized blockchain networks, independent of any traditional regulatory central authority. These markets are extremely volatile, which can result in high returns, but carry equally high risk and may not be appropriate for all risk profiles. Cryptocurrencies are speculatively valued on the perceived utility, scarcity, and adoption of the underlying network or protocol, but also maintain determinants such as auction mechanics and macroeconomic factors that influence the price of these assets. Beyond spot trading, where you simply buy and hold the actual asset, crypto markets also offer perpetual futures, or “perps.” Rather than owning the underlying asset, you are trading a contract that tracks its price, with no expiration date. This allows traders to take leveraged long or short positions without ever holding real crypto. To keep the contract price anchored to the spot price, a mechanism called funding is applied at regular intervals. If the majority of traders are long, longs pay shorts, and vice versa. This cost can add up over time and is an important consideration when holding perp positions for extended periods.
Crypto can be accessed through two primary types of exchanges: centralized (CEX) and decentralized (DEX). Centralized exchanges like Coinbase operate as intermediaries, custodying your assets on your behalf; meaning you do not actually hold your crypto, the platform does. This introduces significant counterparty risk, as has been demonstrated repeatedly by high-profile institutional failures and outright fraud. FTX, once one of the largest exchanges in the world, collapsed in 2022 amid revelations that customer funds had been misappropriated. Binance has faced extensive regulatory scrutiny and billions in settlements with U.S. authorities over financial crimes. Beyond custody risk, centralized exchanges often act as the counterparty to your trades, creating inherent conflicts of interest and the potential for predatory order book practices against retail users. Decentralized exchanges and smart contract protocols, such as DYDX, HyperLiquid, and Aster offer an alternative model, where trades are executed on-chain through automated liquidity protocols. Your counterparty is not an institution; it is individual liquidity providers or other traders interacting directly with the protocol. Critically, decentralized platforms allow you to maintain self-custody of your assets throughout, meaning no single entity controls your funds. The trade-off is that DEXs can carry their own risks, including smart contract vulnerabilities and thinner liquidity in certain markets. For traders serious about crypto, understanding the distinction between these two models is essential before committing capital to any platform.
Prediction Markets & Binary Options
Prediction markets, sometimes called event contracts, offer a novel and fundamentally different trading experience. Instead of speculating on how far a price will move, you are simply betting on whether something will or will not happen in a yes/no binary structure(e.g, will Apple close above 200$ on Friday?). Your risk is fixed the moment you enter, with no stop loss to manage and no open-ended downside. This makes them uniquely accessible and, when approached with an analytical edge, among the most favorable structures available to retail traders while still providing exposure to real market events like S&P 500 movements, CPI releases, election outcomes, weather patterns, or even sports games.
Major institutions are taking notice. CME Group partnered with FanDuel in late 2025 to launch FanDuel Predicts, letting users trade event contracts on financial benchmarks and economic indicators starting from $1. Intercontinental Exchange, parent of the NYSE, separately committed $2 billion to Polymarket. Legacy financial infrastructure is converging around this product category, and prediction markets are quickly becoming one of the most significant new retail access points in modern finance
The markets covered here represent the most accessible and widely traded instruments for developing traders. Other vehicles, including FOREX, bonds, and contracts for difference, exist and carry their own merit, but are outside the scope of this material. A strong foundation in the asset classes above will serve as the groundwork for exploring those markets when the time is right.
- From the desk of Declan Otañez
Works Cited
Schwab.com. “Why Trade Futures through Schwab.” Schwab Brokerage, www.schwab.com/futures/futures-trading. Accessed 20 Feb. 2026.
Schwab.com. “Introduction to Options.” Schwab Brokerage, www.schwab.com/options/what-is-trading-options. Accessed 20 Feb. 2026.
Team, The Investopedia. “Cryptocurrency Explained with Pros and Cons for Investment.” Investopedia, Investopedia, www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cryptocurrency.asp#toc-what-is-cryptocurrency. Accessed 20 Feb. 2026.