Intraday trading is another name for day trading: buying and selling a security within the same trading session, so that every position is closed before the market shuts and nothing is held overnight. The main entry covers the practice, its rules and its risks. "Intraday" is the usual word in India, the United Kingdom and much of Asia, while "day trading" is more common in the United States.
In India the term also names a product type at brokers. An order marked intraday must be squared off the same day, and the broker closes it automatically near the end of the session if the client has not. In return the broker asks for less margin than for a delivery trade, in which shares are actually received and held. The share of trading that results in delivery is tracked as delivery volume.
The word is also used as an adjective for anything measured inside a single session, such as intraday highs and lows, intraday volatility and intraday margin. Styles range from scalping, which holds positions for seconds or minutes, to trades held for several hours. Positions held for days belong to swing trading. Higher leverage and frequent trading costs make intraday results highly variable.