Day trading as a living should be impossible

Quote from denner:

I guess that you were born yesterday. The outlier events that I referred to happen exclusively INTRA-DAY and before you started trading 6 months ago, it's a head's you win, tails you lose in so far as whether you are lucky or unlucky enough to be positioned on the right side of some surprise announcement.
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lol, you're saying a day trader is going to blow up his year on an FOMC announcement.

If you know something is just going to be a coin flip why do you even have a position on in the first place? Just be flat till after the announcement. And even if you did have a position and you were wrong you could just hit out for an above average loss, big deal. Any day trader risking a YEARS worth of profits in a single day is obviously going to eventually blow up.

The events you talked about are good for day traders as far as I'm concerned, they move markets. Moving markets = money. It's the hedge funds and long term investors that just buy and hold that get shredded when some bot inadvertently crashes the market 1000 points and they get stopped out of half their positions at ridiculous prices.
 
Quote from luisHK:

As of your spending for a family of 4, I actually find it low, but expecting to ensure that income from only 100k capital and day trading sounds quite far fetched. [/B]
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Actually a few posters on this forum claim to reach the 6 digits profits with a similar capital ( think I read abt 1 having 110K trading capital and another one a 60K capital since yesterday). But I wonder why with such results they don't attract investors and pocket in much higher profits ??
 
Another silly thread, because there are multitudes of successful day traders just as there are multitudes of not-so-successful day traders.

If you want to make it in this business, you can't approach the market like everybody else does.

If there is a "generalized" statement to be made, it is likely applicable to the masses scalping ES, SPY, etc. etc. using tic data or 1, or 2 minute bars and subtle variations on common technical indicators. Those are the "sheep" you speak of. Lemmings. And some of them are certainly successful - but there are better statistical outcomes available in terms of strategy.

You really don't want to go along with the rest of the masses if they're having a tough go of it.
 
Quote from luisHK:

Actually a few posters on this forum claim to reach the 6 digits profits with a similar capital ( think I read abt 1 having 110K trading capital and another one a 60K capital since yesterday). But I wonder why with such results they don't attract investors and pocket in much higher profits ??
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You're referring to me. Please tell me how I can pocket much higher profits by attracting investors.
 
Quote from abdul_mcgee:

Warning: noob alert.

I find some contradiction in these forums. Day trading, I'm sure, is controversial so I would expect some contradiction. But this is plain weird. One thing I noticed is that some on this forum think that it is nearly impossible to reliably generate a 8-10% return.

That, to me, doesn't make sense. Say you had $100K to use as day trading capital and your monthly living costs ran you 8-10K, taxes in. You'd have to be generating a monthly return of 8-10%, regularly, to make a living from it. So either it is possible to make a living from it or some people are full of it.

Are you meeting your living costs and more through trading? What are your daily targets?

Thanks.
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i'm getting sick from those threads...possible..even with those crazy numbers...100K to trade, 10K(!) monthly expenses..possible with standard x4 intraday margin,no prop x10 or whatever..search for numerous useless threads created by crgarcia.

forget about "targets"...there is no targets..you take what market gives you..not what YOU are looking for..it's a losers attitude..
 
Quote from Hylifejoker:

You are not getting it. Put up 25 to 50k at bright. Get access to millions in buying power. That's what it takes to make it. The real strategies that make real money demand big capital. Otherwise you are just guessing with overoptimistic and unrealistic expectations.
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Why go for a homerun when four singles will do you just fine? My plan is not to make "real money" so I can pimp and roll in a Mercedes. It's just something to finance the next stage of my life.

I think I can do just fine with $100K in capital. We'll see.
 
Quote from TradingScrub:

lol, you're saying a day trader is going to blow up his year on an FOMC announcement.

If you know something is just going to be a coin flip why do you even have a position on in the first place? Just be flat till after the announcement. And even if you did have a position and you were wrong you could just hit out for an above average loss, big deal. Any day trader risking a YEARS worth of profits in a single day is obviously going to eventually blow up.

The events you talked about are good for day traders as far as I'm concerned, they move markets. Moving markets = money. It's the hedge funds and long term investors that just buy and hold that get shredded when some bot inadvertently crashes the market 1000 points and they get stopped out of half their positions at ridiculous prices.
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Unreal. Are you really this dense?

Not once did I mention SCHEDULED FOMC events, but like I mentioned in my first post, it's clear you are new to trading, otherwise you would have known that the Fed has acted intra-day, UNANNOUNCED more than half a dozen times in the past decade.

In no way, shape or form does strictly limiting your time horizon to intra-day protect you from the risks of an EVENT, whether it be the Fed acting on interest rates or something else such as 9/11 or similar.

Only guys with limited experience, laugh this kind of thing off.
 
Quote from luisHK:

I think you shouldn't use last week as a reference, anybody betting long made good money. I made around 9% on the Hang Saeng, without trading at all, and well over 10% in US stocks with a few daytrades in the mix and definetely without much of a clue of the market - got crushed the week before :(

Better do further paper trades during more challenging periods.

As of your spending for a family of 4, I actually find it low, but expecting to ensure that income from only 100k capital and day trading sounds quite far fetched.
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Definitely. I am planning to paper trade for at least a month, if not more. The "inactive" account fee is very minor to get a high level of confidence.

For what it's worth, I made money going both long and short using candle indicators.

But you are very right: last week was pretty easy to make money.
 
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