Thinking about day trading.

[kyleb]

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Would anyone object if I made a day trading megathread with a bunch of good starter info?

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Definitely not. Please do it.

[Stake Monster]

I'm curious as to how big of a BR would someone need to have a decent amount of capital for day trading. I guess you could do it with any amount but to make a living out of it and not have to speculate on small caps too much, how much would be a good starter amount?

[pig4bill]

At least $30k. You need $25k, by regulation, to open a daytrader account. Then you need a little buffer for downturns.

That would be an adequate amount if you already knew how to successfully trade. If not, you're going to burn some money learning it. In the current environment with a lot of volatility, a skilled trader should be able to average around .5% to 1% a day, which translates to $37.5k to $75k per year. I've seen talented guys do much better than that.

[stephenNUTS]

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At least $30k. You need $25k, by regulation, to open a daytrading account. Then you need a little buffer for downturns.

That would be an adequate amount if you already knew how to successfully trade. If not, you're going to burn some money learning it. In the current environment with a lot of volatility, a skilled trader should be able to average around .5% to 1% a day, which translates to $37.5k to $75k per year. I've seen talented guys do much better than that.

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I always reco'd a $30k start(which will give you $120k in intra-day buying power) as pig4bill implied...as the extra $5k allowed for abit of wiggle room to avoid a DT'ing Margin Call....which is a BIG NO-NO

Theres SOOO much more to go over....but we will start here,and when Art make his mega-post,we can really get into the deeper details

Stephen [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]