In order for you to consider trade a good day, how much do you need to profit on a almost daily basis? Couple of hundred... a thousand... etc.
concentrating on the money is problematic and a recipe for ruin in the long run, imo so, a good day trading should be based on how well you traded, not whether the market moved your way. iow, did you follow your rules, respect the stops, and trade logically just by the laws of chance, a person could trade very well and lose money in any given day, because all trade setups are probabilistic, not deterministic i had a day the other week, where i did GREAT trading, but only made 4 dow points. oh well. due to variance, your results on any given day (and especially any given trade) is loosely correlated with the positive expectancy of the trade, and your skill but given sufficient trials, it will be very highly correlated. so, to summarize - a good day trading is where i executed well, traded logically, didn't chase, respected my stops, and didn't overtrade.
Thinking about your trading days in terms of dollars is trading suicide...though I am sure there are some successful people out there who do it, it's a recipe for disaster.. As other posters said, just focus on trading smart, emotional detachment, stop placement, focus focus focus. If you start thinking "oh man, i gotta make $500 today to pay for my penis enlargement", well you aint gonna last very long (pardon the pun)...
You will have good and bad days. Good and bad trades. I have a spreadsheet setup for every trading day of the year. I log my PnL every day and do an average for total trading days. There are about 250 trading days with some time off for vacation. If you average $400 per day, it's 100k annually. So I like to see what my average is. It doesn't mean I am only looking for $400 a day but it gives me a realistic gauge to know how I'm doing. If I'm averaging $200 a day = $50k annually after an extended period of time, I would have to seriously consider doing something else.
This is probably the most meaningful post I have seen on ET yet. This line of reasoning couldn't ring truer. Indeed, the ability to trade well does not correlate with steady profits in all markets and all setups that you see forming. Sometimes, the setups appear for moves that in hindsight simply do not produce the moves worth taking or that the system anticipated would happen. A good working system or method is very different from a PROFITABLE system in this regard. This is one of the reasons that the idea that one system should be able to work equally well across any market is simply a myth. RoughTrader
I trade the ES. I shoot for 1-1.5 points/day. Depending on when I hit it, I'm either done for the day, or might stick around a bit to see if anything else materializes...and if I don't, I look to why and end the day...to come back tomorrow. Anything over it is gravy.