Companies will hate me for what I’m about to say, but it’s the basis of how to day-trade. Today, Google (NYSE: GOOG) went up nearly $15, almost $20 on the week. Last week, it went down around $10. Consider for a second, had you bought 100 shares at the end of last week, you’d be up $2000 today. Even if you had bought yesterday, you’d be up $1500 today.

If you were simultaneously watching a channel like CNBC TV and were connected to your online trading account, you could put in a sell order and actually take a profit on that $1500, minus brokerage/ trading fees. (Let’s ignore taxes for now.) What if you could do this 5 days a week? Or even 3 days? Making over $1000 a day is CEO territory earnings, but many people who are not CEOs do it.

Now this kind of gain that Google stock experienced is generally not going to happen to the same stock several times a week, but stocks sometimes fluctuate several times in a single day, if the market is volatile. Even if that doesn’t happen, there are many other stocks that do the same kind of thing, depending on the market situation and general world news.

To really make your money thought, you need to track several industries and several stocks within each industry. Ideally, you want industries that are not related to each other and thus whose stocks react differently to the same news - or don’t react at all.

If you can pull this off - something that is rather easier now on the Internet - than even 3-4 years ago - you could very likely some very good money on the market. I say easier because whereas historical stock data might have cost $1000/m a few years ago, it’s now free from sites like Google Finance, Yahoo! Finance and Microsoft’s MSN Money Central, amongst others.

Using a lot of free or inexpensive tools (I’ll talk about them as I find them), some market smarts, the ability to see patterns and opportunities while simultaneously surfing the Internet and watching TV (CNBC TV, etc.), a fast internet connection, a good computer, and time every weekday for analysis, you could make a very nice living day trading just two or three dozen stocks.

The drawback is that the government says that if you make over a certain number of trades per week, you are trading as a career and thus you must pay income taxes on your net gains. But unless you are already in a high-paying career, you’re probably not making $1000 a day. And if you are doing trading for a living, you can write off certain expense. The way I see it, if you have the wherewithal and the passion, it’s worth it.

Now for the conscientious, global view: In the ultimate scheme of things, day trading amounts to taking regular profit from other people’s investments. Most companies hate it when investors do that, preferring long-term investors. But that’s what the whole stock market is built on anyway - a redistribution of wealth. If you have a problem with that, you won’t be day trading anyway, and maybe not even investing, period.