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That's correct.

I have a specialized degree in the field of securities regulation and compliance and can put together my own study materials if necessary, but I'm pretty surprised they haven't extended the deadline yet given that a lot of traders will need to learn some of the regulatory nuances for the first...

It depends on what your day trading style is (e.g., market orders vs. limit orders), how many shares you trade per position, whether or not you scale into/out of positions, and whether you want to self-route your orders.

A good starting place to find an edge in the current market conditions the last couple of years is to take a traditional technical analysis strategy from a trading book, wait a little while for traders get trapped, and then go the opposite direction.

Paper trading is definitely easier than real trading, but if you're pretty new to day trading, it's still a great first step so you can learn a lot about stock movement without losing real money too fast (and not having actual money committed can also help the learning process by allowing you to...

A $5,000 capital contribution is pretty common at those types of firms. I'm not sure what's up with the extra $500, but that's not too far off from the norm. Maybe you can try to negotiate the capital contribution down in exchange for less buying power. Experienced active day traders for...

If you're in a slump take a few weeks off from live trading and switch to paper trading until you get your confidence back. Look back at all of your entries and exits (especially for losing trades) and look for things they had in common that you can improve on. Figure out what the mistakes you...

To summarize, most good day traders make a ton more than 20% per year (unless they are trading a very large account). A 4% monthly return from day trading is very achievable and likely not an exaggeration at all.

Depending on what you mean, just scan for stocks up/down a lot on big volume or do scans based on the Money Flow Index (MFI). I use StockVision for scans like that but there is other software you can use too.

I don't have any experience with them, but maybe take a look at Hold Brothers. From what I've seen a software fee / desk fee of $100-$200 per month is pretty common at prop firms like these, but you might be able to negotiate it down depending on how they are profiting from your trading.

With day trading the % return can be less meaningful since it can depend on account size a lot. For example, if you're just trading $10,000 at a time you can pretty consistently average 5% per day (that's just $500), and that would come out to a 1250% return per year. To generalize, that's not...

You should take the free trial of StockVision PowerScan. It has a lot of customizability and I think it's the cheapest.

It can help if you look for coin flip situations where if you're right, you make at least twice the amount you would lose if you are wrong. If the trade has a less than 50% chance of success based on past data, then make sure you'd make at least five times the amount you would lose if you are...

I think price should almost always be the main focus anyway, even when using technical indicators too. When you've been trading for many years (such as most professional traders) you can basically know what a lot of the technical indicators are doing just from looking at the price bars, so...

I think a lot of it depends on what kind of trade you are doing and how volatile the stock is. For example, if you are buying in the direction of the main trend right near a key level on the chart (or key price an identified buyer is holding), then it can often make sense to enter your full...

Actively day trading with a broker you will be required to deposit at least $25,000, you won't be given more than 4-to-1 leverage, and your commission rate will probably be closer to $0.0035 to $0.004/share (unless you can negotiate it down).

I agree there definitely needs to be some element of participation too, such as trading just 100 shares at a time or paper trading on a simulator. My main point is not that you actually need to watch every single tick, but you should be actively engaged watching the market and logging as much...

Thanks, was thinking of another scenario there.

How can a day trader get stuck in a drawdown? Wouldn't you have exited by 4:00 pm? It sounds like you lost money from swing trading or some type of longer-term trading.

I think a lot of new skilled day traders spot patterns in the current market and can make money in the short term, but then they get overconfident from their winners, and when the market conditions change, their strategies start backfiring in dramatic fashion. For anyone wanting to begin day...