I use 2k-5k. I was about to make my living till the PDT rule came in. Remember this financial industry is as crock as any casinos which invite profitable customers to leave by every mean.
I should add that casinos and brokers invites the customers who are CONSISTENTLY profitable to leave.
I should revise the brokers to bigger special interest groups who have many regulators and organizations as their representatives.
Seriously, how on earth could you expect to earn a living trading this amount of money in stocks on 2 to 1 margin? Even if you were good and didn't have any losing streaks, the size of your positions would be so small that the winners wouldn't make enough to live off of.
If you trade for a prop firm that'll give you 10+ to 1 leverage then that's enough money to trade and make enough to live on. If you trade retail, in this enviroment, it's not enough, cause 2 to 1 just won't get you the return you need.
I know I could start daytrading 1 ES with $1,500 and grow it. It's not enough to live on, but it is enough to succeed over time.
Not at IB you couldn't. Besides their minimum account requirement of $2,000 you would also bump into their intraday initial margin requirement to open 1 ES contract which currently stands at $1,781. And, perchance, if you wanted to hold that 1 contract overnight the initial requirement is $3,563. So I'm not sure how you could "start daytrading 1 ES with $1,500" when you'd be hard-pressed to find a brokerage that would allow you to open an account with that little, or meet the minimum margin requirement. And even if you could, I suppose you're assuming you won't have any losing trades in the beginning.... Let's get realistic here folks, or we're gonna have another one of those Turn $5,000 into $1million threads.
Maybe not at IB. But at RB&H I could (daytrade emini initial margin is $800). That would leave $700 or about 12 pts. + comm. for trading. I'm sure I could make a profit with 12 pts. for the max. drawdown on 1 emini doing daytrading. Couldn't hold overnite, but then again I would only daytrade if I was starting out again.