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Swing Trading: Halal or Haram?

by Rakaan Kayali

September 14, 2023
2 min read

Table of Contents

Disclaimer: This post is for informational and educational purposes only, not financial or investment advice. The opinions are solely those of the author, not any organization. Consult a professional before making investment decisions, as all investments carry risk. The author is not liable for losses or damages resulting from the use of this information. Past performance does not predict future results.

Swing trading is a style of trading that attempts to capture gains in a stock (or any financial instrument) over a period of a few days to several weeks.

Swing traders are known to use a lot of technical analysis.

I personally view the majority of technical analysis as a bunch of mumbo-jumbo pseudoscience, no disrespect to the technical analysts out there.

Swing traders also sometimes use fundamental analysis but to a lesser extent.

Halal or Haram?

There are perhaps two salient component parts that make up a Swing trade.

  1. Trade: Obviously a generally permitted activity. However, things to watch out for include:
    1. The asset being traded should be halal to own in the first place.
    2. You should have ownership of the thing you are selling. So for instance, you aren't selling something you borrowed .
    3. You aren’t using broker/seller provided margin. This is because this margin is provided conditional on you using the borrowed funds to buy from the broker/seller. Therefore, the loan is attached to a conditional benefit to the lender which makes such benefit riba and the loan haram to either extend or receive.
  1. A short turnaround: I know of no restrictions in either the Quran, Sunnah or any other source for that matter regarding how long one must hold an asset before they decide to sell it.

From 1 and 2, generally speaking, swing trading is permissible, and Allah knows best.

Should You Swing Trade?

Just because a particular course of action is permissible doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the wise thing to do.

There may be other permissible choices that are wiser courses of action.

As it relates to investing, longer term investors who trade less frequently tend to achieve better returns than frequent traders with short-term horizons.

So, while a particular swing trade may suggest itself to you from time to time, as a general investing strategy I would caution against it.

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Comments

5 responses to “Swing Trading: Halal or Haram?”

  1. Bashar says:

    Salaam,
    What do you think about stocks like Google and Facebook, would you recommend investing in them? They have obviously got very low debt, but there are obviously questions with regards to some content they promote etc.
    Please let me know what you think, would really appreciate it.

  2. Ayhan says:

    Salam, Can you talk about dgaz and ugaz stocks? Are they halal? Thank you

  3. mohamed ameen says:

    Brother, thank you for this answer. So should we not do swig trading? I plan to buy stocks(they come into my demat account in 3 days) & sell them after 3-4 weeks. Is it not Halal? It is fulfilling the requirement that you will have to take possession of a thing before selling it. Asking here, because there are no relevant answers elsewhere in regards to swing trading.

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