Quote from silk:
If you are a great trader, than you will do fine just starting with 25-50k. Assuming you have access to daytrading leverage of 5 or 10 to 1. If you are a great trader within a year your 25k will easily be 300k. A great trader can make 100% on buying power a year. So say you start with 25k, margined 10-1 for day trading, that is 250k in buying power. You can hope to make around 250k in a great year daytrading.
However, if you are not "great" you will almost certainly be wasting your time starting with just 25k.
Just throwing out some numbers, but i would guess that only the top 2% of traders could parlay 25k into a living.
Prop trading gives the undercapitalized "good" trader a shot at making it. The "good" trader would need many years to build up enough capital on his own to make a decent living if he was to start with just 25k. Prop firm buying power would cut this time down significanltly.
So in my opinion, a prop firm gives the mediocre to good trader a fighting chance that he might not have had on his own.
The bottom 75% of traders probably have no chance at all. The sad truth.