If you have been studying and following the market for years, you should have positions in the market, own some stocks or indices? If not I suggest that is where you should start. If you already own stocks, then try demo/paper trading. All brokerages have demo account for you to practice trading. If you have already done that, I suggest you try swing trade first, less volatility and in my own experience, easier than day trade. And, personally I found TA worked only for backtesting, not that helpful when I tried to use them to predict market moves. Good luck.
Save yourself a lot of pain and misery. Learn to program in the platform of your choice. Develop a profitable trading strategy analyzing ten years data with walk forward optimization. Now you are ready to trade.
After that test trade in very small amounts. This is to get you to take heed of the bid ask spread which kills most trading systems.
So much gloom & doom about making $ in the market. That's odd, in this raging bull the non-traders with a 401k are loving it. Swing and trend traders with a bit of experience should be loving it even more - you could not ask for better conditions. That's the problem with day trading - it ensure you miss all the big moves that makes the crowds wealth expand while leaving the day traders eating dirt, just making their broker- richer. Only a very few day trader birds do well over a 2 year range. That is just the harsh reality as written about in many published studies going back many decades to the present. “The desire for constant action irrespective of underlying conditions is responsible for many losses on Wall Street even among the professionals, who feel that they must take home some money every day, as though they were working for regular wages.” Jesse Livermore
Hello bookish, I don't understand what competition has to do with anyone wanting to trade. Can you please explain. What does it matter if a trader have a "PhDs in math, statistics, software engineering and IQs so high most people need a telescope to see them" ? Who cares if a trader have a PhDs in math, statistics, software engineering or whatever degree? Competition does not matter when it comes to trading. All that matters is, does someone (trader) have a probability that they can make money while trading day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year. It's the same for any business, not just trading. To the OP, don't invest a dime in this market unless you have odds that calculate you may make consistence money over time with little effort. Besides, there is no proof that PhDs make money in trading.
Sadly that matches with my experience. Sadly also longer term to make worth while requires capital ie 100k in the first place, if your not already rich then the only way to get there is daytrading.
Ok here it is. Can you make money? Sure. You can scratch in the dirt making 20-50 percent a year without too much work. But can you MAKE MONEY. No. Not for most people. The smart guys are managing billions and eating up the best opportunities and not leaving more than they have to behind. Well, at least that applies to the smart and greedy guys. Guys like myself prefer to fly below the radar but there are not many.
OP has only made the 1 and only post and not returned, while claiming to have studied trading for years. I call BS to this BS.