What I would suggest is that you take a vacation from your job. Do some trading on your vacation, see how it goes. Next, if that went well, and you do decide to leave the job, I would replace it with another job at night and/or weekends, so that you have money coming in. Keep yourself in a position to not have to rely exclusively on your trading until you have considerable experience under your belt. OldTrader
I've been day trading for a little over a year. I paper traded for about 6 weeks quite successfully, then began the real journey - great profits, great losses, smaller profits, bigger losses, eventual consistent small profitability that paid the bills, followed by violation of risk management rules and loss of 30% of my YTD profits in one month. Now I'm retraining myself, adding new strategies to my arsenal and practicing above all strict adherence to my rules. My income has been nearly non-existent over the past couple months, but I had to prove that I can stick by my rules, because my trading is solid. It's so easy, so absolutely easy, yet sticking with your rules for even a single day without fail is one of the most difficult things for me. I've attached a chart that demonstrates my trading capability. I am CAPABLE of trading like this day in and day out, but my confidence was dented in April when I managed - after vowing never to violate basic trading rules ever again - to violate rules and wipe out 30% of my gains. So now despite my CAPABILITY to trade really well and make a living at it, I'm working my way out of a crisis of confidence, so that I again have the ABILITY to pull it off. What will stand between your paper trading success and live trading results will be your ability to be disciplined on EVERY trade, never violating the rules and strategies that made your paper trading so successful. You have to be very adaptive to changing conditions and treat every single trade as completely new. NEVER let the residue of a former trade affect your management of a new trade. Although your indicators may work great over 50% of the time, maybe even more than 80% of the time, NEVER let that influence your adherence to your rules. Example: You trade XYZ stock for over a month because it always goes at least to price $x.xx after it pivots off S/R level $y.yy. As a result of all this success you think, why just day trade for these little profits, why not swing trade for a big move? So you put on a swing position and suddenly XYZ breaks out of that dependable range and you hold on through the drawdown, because it will absolutely come back at least to price level $x.xx; there's no fundamental reason for it to keep moving in the direction of the breakout, and days go by and it keeps moving against you until finally you exit the trade at a loss that's 10 times your max daily loss. If someone had explained all this to me before I ever started trading I'm not sure it would've made any difference. Some things perhaps have to experienced, maybe more than once, to sink in. At this point, I can't unequivocably say that I won't do the same thing again. I firmly believe that I'll never violate my rules again and I seem to be gravitating in that direction, but even a recovering alcoholic who's been sober for 20 years can fall off the wagon.
You may consider trading HSI, Nikkei, or DAX index futures. So you can keep your current job until you are consistently profitable in trading.
Forget the $100 commissions each way. Open an account with either MB Trading or IB and you'll pay less than one cent/share. So even if you have a small account you can minimize transactions costs. As I said previously I traded 2 years while working full time and was confident that I'd be successful when I left my job. At the firm I started with I traded in an office and started with 200 share trades (for $1 each way). I was fortunate to have made $$$ immediately, although a small amount given the small trades. Then I went to 1000 shares trades (back in SOES days) and was more up and down for about a year. Then I began to make $$$$. Over the past 14 years I've had 12 good years and 2 bad years. I'd recommend having 12 months expenses in the bank. And I'd not ever consider using a credit card to further fund a trading account. By the way I started full time with $90K as I wanted to make sure I'd be okay if I had any big drawdowns. At one point I did have a 30+% drawdown. Having adequate capital to trade with is essential. Over time you'll be more at ease with taking losses and your emotions will not be as extreme based on how your trades are going.
paper trading is good only to confirm the system and fills to some extent. real trading is lot different and tougher.
it will take 4-5 years of whole-hearted effort to succeed, not the half-hearted, part-time, hobby-like, swing-trading or investing type of playing. i don't know about u, but most people don't have what it takes.
looks like, yes. Suggest to give yourself 6 months full time, and modest target, say 40k. If you dont reach it in 6m you go back to work, maybe with less pay initially, but thats the part of the cost. If/when you rech it, congrats, you won yourself another 6 months, and reset the targets to slightly higher, say 50k. That is what I'll do shortly.
If you live near a good prop firm or are willing to move near one, you should apply there and try to get a job as a prop trader. Real Prop = you put up ZERO risk capital. You receive guidance from experienced, successful traders. Its the route I took straight out of college. You may be in a better financial situation than I was in, I had to work a night job for a few months until I became profitable. It seems like you may have some money saved up until you/if you become profitable. You can go the no guidance route and cost yourself more time and money in the long-run. I know of 3 quality reputable prop firms in the entire country. I think there are more now however. Do some research and you should be fine.