since 1998. Wouldn't want to do anything else. I'm able to pay all my bills, max out a Roth IRA payment, go on a cruise once a year, and still have my trading account grow. Trading is still a very viable way to make a living...... pT
I haven't read this whole thread, but I will add my .02 anyway. I tried day-trading in '97 and I didn't like it much. Commissions were so high that you had to trade 1000 shares at a time to make money, and the MM's were worse than specialists. I traded for about 7 or 8 months, and lost about $500 on a 100k account. This did not include a few grand spent on ISDN (no broadband back then) and hardware. Now, commissions are .01, and you can actually get executions at the prices you see. You might not be able to make money just by buying whatever is going up, but I made over $50,000 last year (my first full year of trading). I would have done better if I hadn't made a couple of real bad trades, but that is a lot better than a $500 loss. So, from my prespective, it's a lot better now than it was in '97. I also don't do strict day-trading anymore. The only real reason for being flat every night for me was to limit risk. After seeing and experiencing worse moves during the day than overnight, I found other ways of limiting my risk. So now, a lot of my trades are day-trades, but I don't close them just because it is 4:00. So maybe I'm not qualified to talk about strict day-trading. Anyway, sorry for the ramble. Good luck.
yes... yes... yes... i'm out there with my special friend screwing the order flow... no better game than that.
Daytrading works best when markets are topping like in 1993 and 1999-2000. The daily and weekly charts start moving sideways and the volatility moves to the intraday. Of course good traders can make money in any market.
i detailed in another thread why I beleive it's harder now than before. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=182419#post182419 I don't think it's impossible though, but everyone MUST adapt to the changing tides or get washed out to sea.
Yes, from my experience, it's very possible. I started one year ago, lost $13k over 6 months during the learning curve. Got back to zero and made $53k over the final 6 months, while still building up my share size. I am flat every night, trade nyse only, net profitable 7 or 8 days out of 10, worst losing streak was 3 weeks in late Oct with a 15% account drawdown. $40k account, 1 million in buying power. Trading is tough and constantly changing, but you have to always be working on new ideas. I have so many ideas I want to work on and put into play, but I just can't find enough hours in the day. I think things will get progressively harder over the next several years, but you have to remember that there is always someone making money in the market. You just have to have the creativeness and work ethic to be one of them.
Lescor. Congrats on your success. If I have half your positive attitude/work ethic maybe I'd be 10 times profitable. Keep it up!!