So you mean it's better to just wing it, bet the farm and hope you end up in the forbes list? When you have edge, trade as small as possible and as often as possible. When you don't, bet once and then never again. Your choice
Well when you have an edge, whether you swing it and bet the farm or grind every day or even every pip, you will make money. The thing is I find it's easier to keep what you've earned if you win in a windfall. Michael Burry swung it and bet the farm when he felt he had an edge and so did Roaring Kitty although he didn't bet the farm, more like a barn at a time. So it's not necessarily true that the traders who traded big were gamblers who didn't have an edge.
Nobody can answer that question and give you the 100% sure answer. On a daily basis people do or invent things that were supposed to be impossible till they invented it. You can says that something is almost impossible, but that does not mean that it will be impossible for you. You will have to try to find out yourself by going for it and critically analyze your progress during your journey. This is just a short list of people who did something that is so called "impossible". They all became billionaires starting with small money or some even without any money at all. If they would have told when they were young: " I will be a billionaire", nobody would have believed them. Same remark about inventions: light bulbs, electricity, cars, rockets, planes, fax machines, thousands of different medecines, internet, electric bikes, desktops, laptops, mobile phones, even vibrators.....
If I may, I'll make one distinction between trading (and day trading in particular) and people who got rich through other means or made inventions. There's a great deal of luck involved. And the margin of error is probably bigger. Day trading in particular is the one field where if your method is based on luck/randomness, you're bound to blow out or fail eventually. I have a friend who's been very lucky financially. Bought a cheap property and sold it for a windfall profit at the height of the current real estate boom. Piled all of the profits into the stock market 12 years ago and have benefited from one of the longest and most profitable bull markets in history. I saw another trader who did the same move prior to the top in 2008 and took instant huge losses. Same move, very different outcome. Bottom line - there's a lot of luck/randomness in life, but day trading is the one area where you won't go far on luck alone...
Building Amazon over more than a decade , or building Microsoft over several decades, or building Dell is impossible without a lot of qualifications. I know for instance that Bernard Arnault worked hard and was very smart in business, not much to do with luck. You cannot build a billion dollars business based on luck as you have to take thousands of decisions to get where you are. That excludes that luck is a major factor. The only luck that they had and that had impact on their business is that they had the qualifications they needed to do what they did. There is a reason why daytrading is so difficult. You need some qualifications to survive. As you trade frequently the factor "luck" has less impact. Luck has a big impact if you have to take almost no decisions.
Well, I never said they built their fortunes and businesses on luck alone. Even Bezos himself says he's had a lot of luck along the way. But there's a lot of survivorship bias in these numbers. The ones who made similar risks and efforts, i.e., quitting their jobs, working day and night for years, but not making it, you never hear about in the headlines. I have a good real life story on this. We have one very famous former billionaire in Norway. Long story short, he was an early entrepreneur in the telecom industry and built a very profitable business which he sold for a windfall profit. Retired early, moved to Spain, got bored after a few months and became one of the worlds biggest day traders and went on to lose it all and then some very quickly. Ever since - he's been trying to make it as an entrepreneur again, but with no success. The telecom industry where he once thrived is now a saturated market with too high competition. And his other ventures haven't gone so well...
Yes luck plays a huge part. I was lucky to find a mentor online who became a friend, steering me through Amibroker, coding and setting up my system initially in the early days. I was also lucky when my marriage crashed and I was single for 20 odd years, not a lot of distractions and sunk my all into trading in all my spare time. Got lucky again with a market continually rising. Got lucky again when via government legislation, in my circumstance can trade tax free. Lucky again where I live dead smack centre in the middle if the greatest mining city of the world.
Met my current girlfriend at a cafe five years ago. It was not a cafe she used to frequent and I was not planning to go there myself that day, but we both did and ended up getting together. The jury is still out on whether that was bad or good luck.
Hi, I think you should be thinking about $1K per week, consistently, NOT per day. At a reputable broker, you are talking about 2 ES Contracts ($15K Margin +$10K "Cushion", so you are chill). I have no idea about your strategy, or whether you are holding overnight. 1) On the account you mention: NEVER. But after 5-10 years of full-market exposure, $1K-$1.5K a week is achievable. 2) VERY. 3) Yes, achievable, if you change your daily (fairy tale) goals to weekly goals. For sure. 4) Way more. After you achieve consistency, you will laugh at these people! ADDENDUM: If you REALLY want to make $1,000+++ a day, every day, then, there is only ONE person I can recall. BUT, you have to be SUPER HARDCORE, and MEGA EXTREME. Are you EXTREME??? IF SO, this is YOUR dude then!!! @padutrader and @SimpleMeLike have had mixed experiences...