Jesus what's with the "go get a job" posts, if this is something that you WANT to do and be good at understand that it is going to take time, probably years, and u still may not make it. If you are tenacious, or think that u can do it if someone else can, then stick it out. But if you put up money at this firm u should leave right away, $50 limits WTF?? If they are backing you that is different. If u are at RBS or whatever downtown once you feel that u have a grasp or are profitable u need to leave, and if you are at VCM you're already fu****.
First of all, whoever you are working for is going about new trader limitations all wrong. Yes, new traders should have a position limit (my firm was 100sh also), yes new traders should have a daily stop loss (ours was $200-$400 depending on what happened), yes you should probably not trade any stock over about $80 or so. And stay away from the lure of trading SPY at first (or any ETF in this climate), just watch it closely like an indicator. It took me a good year to realize that a day traders edge lies in trading stocks trading huge relative volume for the day. Often times these are stocks that just released earnings, but can be upgrades/downgrades and other news as well. You'll get chopped to death trading any stock that has nothing going on with it. Professionals don't touch those stocks with a 10 foot pole. If you have a way to sort (rank) stocks by Relative volume, use it (freestockcharts.com has a crude "Volume Buzz" ranking feature). Look at the volume BBY did today. 44 Million shares, when on average it does 5M. This is where the money's at. You could make great money just trading this 1 stock multiple times today. Focus on learning to read the tape. This means different things to different people, but this is one of the only ways you can risk 2-4cents to possibly catch 25c, 50c, or more moves. Look for price levels that are printing a ton of volume, but won't budge. Institutions/Hedge Funds/Mutual funds fill huge orders in these news stocks all morning, find out at what prices they are buying, and buy in front of them. If you notice they are holding the offer and won't lift it, short in front of them. When they lift, cover. Not too hard, in theory. You will be able to spot their hidden orders if you watch for them. All day traders do is basically front run institutionally trading all day, because we don't/can't move the market. I'm climbing the learning curve myself, so take it with a grain of salt. But i wish someone would have told me this stuff when i started, in plain English. Peace.
You can't give good advice away. Ok, here's what you want to hear. Read all you can, talk to the many great traders you'll meet and pick their brains for the jewels of wisdom just waiting to be plucked. Never give up. Trading is the ultimate profession. Is that better? PS Can't find a real job so let's try something 5000 times harder than work. Yep, sounds like a plan. Its Trading or This Guess which one is Jack Hershey.
A classic example of having all the wrong instincts. Since you are only trading 100 shares and scalping for pennies...next time you think you should buy...go short. When you think you should short...buy. Its only a small amount of money so you should experiment with this as crazy as it sounds. <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/cKUvKE3bQlY&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/cKUvKE3bQlY&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
This is such a fallacious statement, I'm not even sure where to begin. If it were that easy, we'd all be rich.
Good advice from stock777. Also, what's ridiculous is it sounds like they put you in front of a computer, told you to trade with tight SLs, want you to figure out the rest, and you are asking everyone why you are not making money. If you read over the ET you'll see that most people say it takes 1000s of hours of screen time/learning to figure things out. Why do you think with absolutely no knowledge of trading or time investment you will make money immediately? And you are asking for people on ET to tell you how to trade? If that's the way you are going to do it, it really would be better to go get something "real". Noone can teach you to trade, noone is going to give you their secrets. You have to figure it out yourself. If you can't, find another prop firm that will train you. There are plenty.