We get it, the guy can use leverage. Let's say he levers up 20X, so he's swinging a line of $1 million in futures contracts. He still needs to generate 12% returns on that $1 million. How many professional hedge fund managers get $12% a year, year after year? How many do that from day 1? Any way you slice it, making $120K would put him in the upper echelon of retail traders. Anybody who is saying he's going to "try finding some pattern in the days highs and lows" or whatever the OP was saying isn't at that level.
What are his chances of achieving his goal at your prop firm? One in ten succeed or are the odds worse than that?
You can't compare retail trading to institutional level trading. What's relatively probable to make with $100K can be absolutely unrealistic to do with $10M not even speaking of billions. Market is fractal structure, but within the physical limits of reality (aka liquidity issues etc.).
Pressure is probably number 1 enemy of trading. You set a target of $500/day, may be cause you depend on it for paying bills. that is bad sign. Trading decision should never be effected by how much income you need from trading. Find another source of income than trading to relieve the pressure to trade.
Asking this question on a trading forum is really opening a can of worms. This type of topic usually ends up going down the same road as all the famous "trading is impossible" threads on here.....
This is a realistic goal if the instrument you are trading has the volatility. The most important thing is to take what the market gives you and never hold a position because you didn't hit your profit target. Always limit your loss to a small amount so your daily losses don't overwhelm you. You must shoot for small profits per trade and use some type of trailing stop to minimize your losses.
You really dont need to be asking what others can do the question is what can you do? I dont get it, I really dont care how much any one else can make and I like to think I can do better than most. If you have to ask a question like that you must have a lot of doubt that you can do it and negative thinking will make you lose your money faster than you can bat your eyes.You need alot of confidence to trade.Especially to day trade.
Could be + $500 one day, + $700 day #2, then one day (or week) the sh*t hits the fan and account is wiped out cleaner than the plate at a homeless shelter. For example: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=239446 http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=224491&perpage=20&pagenumber=1
lol true... it usually starts out ok though... kind of how new drivers are good... they are nervous and play by the rules... then the speeding & tickets/accidents come in during the sophomore phase... then things get better. new traders are great however $500/day is a lot of money. I'd be more cautious of a trader that said they have only been trading for a year vs. new guy or 3+ years on a desk.