And being a speculator(a neutral word) is totally fine. However, I think it's best to get a few things clear first before one takes a short term (intraday or position trade for a few days) bet on a very wild stock:
1) Left side(downtrend) or right side(uptrend)?
While it really depends! For the same stock, it could be uptrend on 1 min chart, downtrend on 15 min chart, uptrend on hourly chart, up trend again on daily chart, and downtrend on weekly chart... It is your trading time frame that really decides whether the stock is currently uptrend or downtrend. Therefore, decide your trading time frame first, then go to your respective chart and see how the stock is trending in that time frame.
2) entry and exit signal
everyone has his own defined entry and exit signal for stock market. Maybe it is an important support and resistance price level in a particular time frame; Or it could be some fancy charting signals; Or it could be some news or rumors; Or it could be big house analysts report updates; Or it may be some important corporation results and announcements trigger. And I believe all these trading signals are making sense, as long as it is proven in the long run with some convincing winning statistics. But try not to speculate base on "gut feelings" or "guessing", it is unstainable since it involves too much emotion. Lastly, try to make the trading signal easy to follow and understand.
3) money management
For me, money management is and should be a simple formula:
winning rate * gains per trade - losing rate * loss per trade > 0
(winning rate + losing rate = 100%
also gain per trade and loss per trade must deduct all trading fees)
Looks easy, but how to achieve it? the part 2 mentioned above comes into play, meaning after defining your trading system, you should be able to find how much money you will win per trade, and how much you can lose per trade, both in dollar term, and then you should do at least 100 or 200 trades to find your winning rate. It should be a sustained winning system if the equation greater than 0, and vice versa. And from experience, the winning rate is not that important, it is the combination of the three (winning rate and gains per trade and loss per trade) that really matters. Therefore, defining your profit target and stop loss level become extremely important.
4) get familiar with the stocks you play
generally speaking, the more volatile the stock, the better it is for speculating or short term trading, since at least it moves and give one opportunity to make(lose) money. Thus one should know the behavior of the particular stock that you trade, eg: the important price level of that stock, the daily trading range, daily volume, when XD, when results will be released, how is the stock option behaving, and market sentiment of the day.
Here we are not talking about investment. I am only sharing the short term trading experience that I have had before. If you ask me, I can't remember much about my winning trades. But I will never forget all the big losing trade that I have ever incurred, and below are the only two reasons why speculators LOSE BIG on certain trades:
1 didn't cut initial small loss (if you really have this stop loss level)
2 keep averaging down (if you long) or keep averaging up (if you short) until blow the account
