Day trading is an excellent way to make good money, but if you’ve heard it’s easy or a form of passive income, you’ve heard wrong. You need to put some work into it.

Day trading in commodities or stocks is, at base, a job. While it can be a highly lucrative job, it’s also one that means you need some basic traits to succeed. You also need some specific habits, and they have to be so ingrained they’re automatic.

The first thing you need is a great sense of time. Anyone who has trouble getting up first thing in the morning or needs to jumpstart with that first cup of coffee will only be miserable day trading. That’s because the best time to figure out what you’ll be doing on the market on a particular day is right before the opening bell. That happens at nine am in New York City – six am in California and five am in Hawaii and Alaska. You can’t just be an early riser, though. You also have to have an excellent internal scheduling system and clock.

Habit number two is maintaining a good set of quantitative thinking skills. You can make or lose money if you’re just running off your basic hunches, but to really do well, you have to make informed choices. That means reading, understanding, and dealing with numbers without thinking about them consciously. You’ll need to be numerate and be able to manipulate numbers in your head with enough skill to tell if you’re looking at a blip or a trend, then act accordingly.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you have to be a trained mathematician. You can learn how to deal with numbers correctly, even it’s never been your strong suit. Some numerical skills can almost become second nature once you get going.

Another habit all successful day traders need is to combine patience, organizational skills, and a strategically short memory. This is a hard skill to learn, since you can’t allow yourself to feel disappointed if you miss getting a stop at its top, or if you lose money because the short you were hoping for never showed up. Don’t get caught up in your losses, or over focus on the times when you really pick a winner.

Dedicated research is habit number four. You won’t have to consume accounting statements the way someone in long term conventional investing does, but you have to constantly be getting new data and analysis. You also have to be proactive about your buying and selling, and make fast, accurate judgments, then act on them just as quickly. The only way to make the correct decision is to have the right research. Just don’t let it paralyze you.

You should also keep in mind the fact that much of this analysis isn’t directly done by you. The best traders always keep lots of tools available, and can quickly access a number of different data and research services.

If day trading appeals to you as a new career, you’ll have to build up a support network. You’ll need to find some investors willing to help you apply leverage, as well as a good broker.

If you believe that you have all these skills, day trading offers an exciting and fascinating way to make a huge income. It’s a job you can honestly consider fun, and if you have what it takes, it’ll be pretty enriching, too.