Margin requirement w/o portfolio account: about $10,000 This is after I closed out both the future and the Put option position -- so profit for the day 577.50 and the trade was not dependent on a whole lot of skill to manage.
You'll need to learn stock options. Checkout prop firms, you will need about 10K to get started, including min seed money.
No one is going to be able to give you any real applicable advice unless you add more information about your abilities. You said you believe you can make a living from day trading. Here are what some other people believe: 1) They will be discovered in LA and make a living being in movies/TV 2) They will make a living playing professional sports 3) They will open a successful store 4) Become a Youtube star 5) Make a living playing poker All the professions listed above including day trading are indeed "possible" like you say, but they are by no means "probable", based on the number of people who attempt them versus the very small subset that actually succeed. The question you have to ask yourself is what do you possess that will separate you from all those who tried and failed at specialized skill professions like day trading? Day trading for a living will ONLY be possible if you can consistently make money from daily market fluctuations on a regular basis. $30,000 is underfunded for a stock account, but well funded for a futures account. Getting an average of 1 futures ES point a day is $25K annually, but that is meaningless if you are not able to trade the daily moves. You mentioned that in one month you were able to make a 350% return. Then you said you had to go back to "work". This means that 350% return was not something you felt you could easily repeat over and over since you would have stayed with it and continued trading. You're likely better off trading part time and on sim while keeping your job until actual stats over time show you can successfully trade. It may take years to develop successful trading skills, if ever. But if you succeed in doing that, you'll have your answer.
Try simulated trading with 30k account, keep track of all your results in a spreadsheet. Try to make 10% per month, that's more 120% per year compounded. Very few make half of that consistently.
What IS your experience? Trading stocks? Forex? Futures, Options? Get where? Get $30k in your brokerage account? I would just transfer it from checking when you have made some money working. Are you in the U.S.? If so, I would recommend IB, that's who I use, for a brokerage. There are others that are good, too. If you use Linux, then you are pretty much limited to IB or TD Ameritrade, though. And of the two, IB has lower commissions. Oh, and are you talking about trading stocks, or other instruments? That makes a difference. If you want to start from just a few hundred bucks and trade up, you will need to go offshore, for stocks. Or Forex, for that matter. There was one guy who is all over youtube who not many years ago started with an offshore account with I think $560 or $540 or something like that, and in like 3 years traded up to a million. Stocks. With the small account you can't trade stocks through U.S. brokerage. Also with such a small account you kinda have to rely heavily on leverage. Some of the offshore brokers go as high as 6x margin for stock trading. You can lose everything in a couple of bad days. Or you can double your tiny account every week or so. At any rate, it is highly recommended to switch to a U.S. brokerage once you are significantly over $25k. It is also maybe a good idea to just start out with long term investing or swing trading with a U.S. broker and regularly add to that account, until you have a proper day trading kitty built up. Keeping this separate from any retirement accounts is probably a good idea. BTW if you have researched this fully, and I am thinking you didn't but if you did then you know that the vast majority of new day traders FAIL. And yes a GOOD trader with lots of experience, savvy, knowledge, and discipline can make a living trading a $30k account. A more realistic amount would be $100k unless you are some sort of prodigy. IYAM, if you CONSISTENTLY make $100/day with a $30k account, you are doing pretty good. Can you live on that? Lots of great guys here who have helped me out. It won't happen overnight, though. Stick around, have a good attitude, show that you are learning and that advice won't be wasted or scorned out of hand, and you will get help, too. You have my sincere sympathies. Too cold for me. Finally, remember this. The little guy, the new guy, is FOOD. Those very few who have survived the learning process and built up fat, powerful accounts and skill sets, are the EATERS. Money doesn't just magically appear. The newbies bring it to the table. And finally finally, spend some time paper trading. It will NOT teach you how to live trade. But if you can't double your paper trading account in a month, don't even bother trying to live trade. Serious. I paper traded up from I don't remember, $100k I think, initially, to $2.5M over several months and I still am in the red, in live trading. It is different in so many ways. Paper trading is way easier for several reasons. Do it first. That is your baby steps. The marathon can come later, when you stand a ghost of a chance.
350% return in a month? And you had to stop due to unemployment? What happened to the money you made trading stocks? I don't get it. If I was tripling my money every month, no way would I hold a regular job that would interfere with my trading. Moot point since I am retired, but yeah something doesn't sound kosher here. Being unemployed should have helped, not hurt, your trading. Excuse me, my BS alarm is going off.
My only 'savings' was my money in my account. If i don't have a job, but still have to pay a mortgage, car payment, insurance, internet, gas, food, two pets, student loans, support girlfriend without job, etc. I need to get the money from somewhere and that's where I took it. Then I got a job, leaving me with no money to fiddle around with. Indeed, I did make 350% my last month of trading, and that was when I was a PDT! Now imagine if I wasn't! I am 25 yrs old and have been through the ringer my whole first year and a half of trading. I use my own strategy and no one else's.