You're an individual retail day trader?
Come back to us in 10 years and lets see if you are still making money. Or rather lets see if you can beat the S&P 500 for 10 years straight.
Comparing returns between income-oriented day traders and compounding-orieted mutual funds is like comparing top speed between f1 cars and endurance cars. You can certainly do it, but you're not doing anything worthwhile with your time by doing so. My strategy has high returns but low capacity and no compounding potential...simply put, I'm not competing against the S&P 500, I'm making an income. In fact, most of my excess returns end up in SPY.
1). never stop studying about what is going on
2). practise, practise, practise (otherwise known as paper trading) before you ever lay down any coinage
3). don't let emotions ever take you away from whatever strategy your paper trading comes up with
4). whatever the environment you had when you did your paper trades, don't allow that to change when you finally put some coinage down.
5). take a holiday from trading if the markets get too volatile (your definition of volatile applies here)
6). remember that many of your trades will lose coinage, it is up to you to determine what you put in place to mitigate this, others will make enough to cover these losses, if you keep to the rules you have.
7). if your success at paper trading does not see the same success in coinage trading, stop and do a complete review of what has happened and go back to paper trading.
8). keep meticulous records of all your trades, paper or real and continually look for further insights into yourself as you do this.
9). continually look at what your goals are and why you are doing this.
10).don't spend any coinage that you cannot afford to spend on this, in other words, keep calm and steady.
That's like saying that having a very complex system for playing blackjack to have an advantage over the house isn't gambling.
My definition of gambling is "any event in which money is bet on the outcome of an event in which the user does not have 100% perfect knowledge". If you're an insider trader, you're not gambling. If you're Joe-average day trader, you're a gambler.
Being a good gambler is a skill that can be developed. If your game of choice is the stock market, then those things he's talking about are part of how he pushes the odds in his favor.
What I think you need to add to your definition is an addendum that says that what you bet is significant enough that you will suffer significant harm from losing. So if you cannot afford to lose that $5 you put down on some race, then that is significant. if putting down $1,000,000 on some event and losing means nothing to you, then are you still gambling or having entertainment.
My father's advice to me from a very young age, was to treat all "bets" as a loss anda form of entertainment. So only use what you could afford to lose. if you cannot afford to lose anything, then you don't lay down resources on the expectation of "winning", that is the mug's game. So as far as day trading is concerned, follow the rules that I set out above, which are the same rules that I received from others who have actually been successful in day trading. Interestingly enough, I have had the same advice from those who were unsuccessful and they admit they broke the rules as laid out.
Your caveat there often swallows the rule. Many bet on the market and make big bucks only to lose multiples of it later.
there's no guarantee it will be created immediately, execute at all, and if it creates a market order you might very well not like the price it does end up executing at