Anyone daytrading as primary income?

It's far from my primary income but I do some day trading as sort of a paying hobby. To date this year I've made a little over $60K. I suppose if I got serious about it and looked at as a full-time job I might be able to approach the $120K you mentioned, but that's too much risk for me.

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What is the best way to get started

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As I have written several times on this board, the best way to end up with a million dollars by day trading is to begin with two million dollars.

How much cash do you have? It's a question all investors first ask, and most people lose money day trading. I would guess anywhere from 500-1 million to invest would be needed to pull in enough for my family to live on.

nowhere near that.

I had a last day order in to sell something but it didn't quite make it to my limit price so I'll just sell it on Thursday. It'll start 2014 strong.

So, I finished the year net of commissions and fees making $60,769.73.

Of course a purist investor would correctly point out to me if I had invested my "tradable cash" last January in just a stock market index fund I'd have more than double what I made by trading but I had fun trading and I had much less downside risk by having the cash on most overnights.

My tradable cash is only about 35% of my total brokerage portfolio, the rest being pretty much invested in stocks the entire time.

For the year I ended up executing 351 buy & sell trades for day trading purposes and made a profit on 331 of the trades (94% success rate), thus losing money on 20 trades.

All manual.

Check out the updated prices and indices on page 9 of the predictions thread. Do you agree with the prices?

As a day trader, over time, it's very very difficult to beat the market. Option traders have shown more consistent success but it's much more Invokved and riskier. I would not recommend.

Look if it was easy to profit day trading every one would be doing it.

No question the majority of people who take up day trading lose money and quit day trading.

Super risky. The odds of you losing money are vastly greater than making money.

I tried it for 6 months years ago. After commissions and fees I was near even. I was doing it full time and trading a good bit more than ruskie. Probably had 600 trades in 6 months.

Then I got caught in a bad position. Too much in ome stock, the primary stock I traded each day. I preferred to get out of it before the trading day ended most days, but my sell order did not get filled this particular day. Company came out with a catastrophic profit warning one minute after the market closed. 6 cents eps instead of the 18 that was expected. Stock dropped 30% in seconds. I even got a margin call I had to cover.

Risky business depending on it for income. Very risky and the odds are highly against you.

Agree on the odds of losing money being higher than making money in day trading.

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hen I got caught in a bad position. Too much in ome stock, the primary stock I traded each day. I preferred to get out of it before the trading day ended most days, but my sell order did not get filled this particular day. Company came out with a catastrophic profit warning one minute after the market closed. 6 cents eps instead of the 18 that was expected. Stock dropped 30% in seconds. I even got a margin call I had to cover.

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All of this is a reason I like using S&P and Dow futures. Indexes tend not to move 10+% in a matter of moments. Total acct value in one stock shouldn't exceed 10-20% (if it is a highly traded blue chip stock that is one of the Dow30 for example I might have a little more than a lower volume stock). In order to make a profit day trading stocks one has to have high %'s of acct value in a single stock.

Also, since futures are traded 23.25 hours a day there is less of a chance of a massive gap. Stops in the futures are good 23.25 hours a day.

Daytrading 101:
1. Get approved to sell uncovered puts/calls on margin.
2. ????
3. Profit.