Wow, that was entirely pessimistic. I do have a job as a software engineer. I trade on the side. You're being so negative when it comes to dreaming big (small-minded). I have spent countless hours doing my own research and practicing for more than 2+ years. I suppose I'll just move on and prove you wrong.
$30k is preposterously undercapitalized. There's mathematically no way that you can generate enough risk-adjusted profit to make full-time trading worthwhile. You can either trade with reasonable risk management and fail to make enough money to live decently, to say nothing of replacing a full-time salary+benefits or growing the account at a reasonable pace, or you can make the classic undercapitalized noob trader mistake and take far too much risk in a desperate effort to cover your monthly nut. If you do the latter there's a 90%+ chance that you'll blow up and be worse off than when you started. And that's assuming that you're trading at the level of a highly-experienced successful pro to begin with.
So clearly you’re here to promote your Stock Twits account where you advise everyone else how to make money, while here you pretend that you’re the one needing advice how to make money. This proves that you won’t be able to make money on your own. If you could, you’d already be doing this instead of needing to spam these forums.
HAHA. I haven't used my ST account in a long time. I was just looking for honest advice. Everyone here is so opinionated my gosh
If you were honest then you’d provide the same advice to everyone else - warning them against day trading.
What you wrote sounds oxymoron. From your past experience, you "believe" you can make a living by daytrading. Well, were you able to consistently make money so that you ended in the black for the month? What about your trading strategy? As a daytrader, you have only your chart to guide you. How solid are you at reading tea leaves? Now let me ask you a question? Are you economically stable enough to lose the 30K and still come out okay? You don't sound like you have a very solid trading plan and the probability of you losing everything is quite high IMO. Moreover, we're in a difficult environment. The market isn't what it used to be with all the technological advances. This makes it especially challenging for home-based individual traders with a limited fund. If I were you, I invest the 30K on something more productive like education. Just my 2-cents.
My advice. If you have $30k then sim trade with an imaginary 30k first. Track it as if it were real money. And be honest with your tracking. If after 30-60 days you are on track to make the money you want, then try real money. If not revise your plan and try again.
$30K is PLENTY of capital to start with provided that you don't withdraw funds from your trading account for any expenses other than trading execution costs. In other words - get a software job to pay for your living expenses and to pay for your ancillary trading modeling software and ECN. You should be hyper-focused on growing your account equity in a slow, methodical fashion. Your goal is simple: CONSISTENCY. With consistency comes the ability to lever. Your approach is the same when you are trading one MES as it is when you are trading 100 ES. And that's how you go from making $100 per day to making $10,000 per day. But the only thing you concern yourself with is taking a little something away from the market every single day. You hit for average. When you are able to string together fifteen winning days versus three losing days in any given month - that's how it's done. When your losing days are somewhat rare and are no bigger than any winning day - that's how it's done.
$30K is a nice start, but not enough for full time trading stocks, $100K minimum + emergency funds + other savings.