Is $25k required for day trading?

[Chrisman886]

[ QUOTE ]
I was just wondering why you are expected to lose money the first year of day trading. Isn't your expected value in the market positive and therefore you should be expected to make money?
I don't know anything about it and am curious?

[/ QUOTE ]

The market is extremely dynamic and as a trader you need to learn to constantly and consistently change your strategy with the changing market. As an analogy, you play poker with a standard deck of cards, but with the market the set of cards in that deck is changing and therefore you need to adjust. Expectation as it pertains to trading is very abstract because of this. It is difficult to explain, but learning what that "deck" is by just jumping into the marking is a daunting task for someone with no experience. Experience will teach you, not just some resource. No book is going to tell you how to adapt to current market conditions and solid strategies are closely guarded secrets because if they get out, all the money will dry up. You cannot have everyone exploiting the same specific edge in the market as eventually that edge will no longer be left to exploit.

This is just one answer to your question. There are many more.

[pig4bill]

Yes, and that's why there's no such thing as Expected Value when it comes to trading the market.

Most people that try daytrading go broke 3 or 4 times or more before they get the hang of it. Some never get the hang of it.

[ubiestmea]

[ QUOTE ]
Yes, and that's why there's no such thing as Expected Value when it comes to trading the market.

Most people that try daytrading go broke 3 or 4 times or more before they get the hang of it. Some never get the hang of it.

[/ QUOTE ]

There are proven day trading techniques with specific parameters that when applied consistently are +EV.

Problem is while most people can easily learn proper money management concepts and trading techniques, applying them consistently is another thing altogether. Under the stress of real-time trading most people fall apart and abandon the structure of technique and end up trading like hunch betters.

Look at the famous turtles that Richard Dennis trained, granted they traded commodities and were trend followers, but they were all given the exact same training with exact parameters to follow. Yet some went bust while others made big bucks.

Everyone experiences and reacts to the stress of real-time trading differently, some can learn to handle it and some pay a high price to find out they can’t.

[Fishhead24]

If one is paying a total $20 to trade a stock(9.99 buy and sell at AMERITRADE)........one should be trading at least $20,000 on ONE stock to make it worth the effort and have a fighting chance.

-FH-

[noggindrill]

at ;least 50k oin mu opinin