zero. i was wiped out in 1991. if you are interested in the story, check out my innerworth.com master interview posted on my site www.marketsurfer.com under the dave's wave tab. enjoy ! surfer
i suggest a different route. with just 2000 and no idea how to trade and with the pdt rules stopping you from trading stocks i would take a longer term approach and try to build the money up instead of trying to scalp pennies. i would set a goal of trying to do a number of larger % gainers on a longer term basis. there are many small stocks that channel in a range big enough for you to do this and it wont happen fast enough to get you into pdt rule trouble.look at stocks like q,sunw,jdsu,drooy,cpn.crus,amcc vtss ect. just study the daily ranges and ride the waves. in the main time find a good job and try to save some money to trade later on. the chances of you trading this for a living are 0. good luck.
A good free one is TSim+ available on the web. I use it to forward test new trading methods. Actually it's shareware, I sent the guy $10. Well worth it. The catch is you need an IB account to use it. Failing that you can go to prophet.net and watch the 15 min delayed streaming charts, keeping track of your trades on paper. (No cheating!!!)
I never paper traded but I had a plan for stocks. You are ahead of me it looks like. I added from salary to the 300 bucks I had. So it looks like you are a head of me there too. I made about 10% each turn. And I shortened the hold down steadily to 6 to 8 days. I did okay 7 out of 8 times. The times I screwed up, I figured out quite easily that it wasn't making money so I had made a mistake in entering. Your paper trading probably tells you how it will go already. I tried to think of why you should not trade. The closest I came was ittakes time out from studies. since i worrked my way totally through school for 6 years, I concluded that by trading, you would spend less time than I did working while in school. I worked for five years and got married during that period. After than my job, if any, was to participate in something I could contribute to. I wrote books mostly. when i graduated and worked, I only spent up to an hour a day doing analysis and about one call a day from work to place orders and exit. I have had high school kids (students) do stocks the way I do. About 1 a year was able to get to a point to be able to pay for their yearly college costs while they were sixth formers (they had much more capital than you). Most were paper traders because of their parent's reality. Making money is easy as you have found out. It seems to be okay to start any time from my experience. Not many people agree with my views.
This is probley the best idea, except without the paper trading (by the way,stop saying paper trading, when you say that to your self it takes away the emotional part of learning to trade). Your young and have time on your side to learn. Make a bargin with the devil(you). Get 200 one doller bills, and put 100 in one box and mark it "continue", put 100 in another box and mark it "not for me'. Your goal is to double your money in 6 months with your fav.set ups,stratagy what ever. Have your money management rules in place,like never risk more than 1% of your account on a trade(1% of 100 = 1.00$) Make your whole plan, write it down and follow it. For every winning trade, take 1 dollor out of NFM box and put it in your continue box,and for every lossing trade do the oppisite. At the end of 6 months,you will know what the right thing to do is. sulong