OK fist off I have spent almost 12 hours over the last 2 days searching this site, reading various forums and thread here on almost every topic. I think I may be a bit more confused now than before I started. A small bit of background I have a small swing trading ($3000 opening balance) account with Tradeking opened 1 year ago to "get my feet wet" and learn how things work a bit. In that year I have learned to manage my losses and just let the big wins happen. I closed out of '06 with a $394.33 loss and now so far this year I am UP by $582.01. Getting better. Anyway in this year have watched a TON of intraday trades go by that I knew would make money and I realize that the ability to day trade can really accelerate profit potential however I do not have the ability to open an account with $25k+. I can only afford to invest about $5k-$10k. I came here originally to try and find a foreign broker that was not limited by the $25K balance rules imposed for PDT's in the US. While reading all these forums I many conflicting reports about how emini's forex, futures, options, etc. are a lot better. So I start thinking about moving to Forex trading then I see posts saying the only big profit comes from daytrading stocks. So now I have no idea I want to trade...I just know I want to trade something and be able to do it daily (and possibly nightly since I am more of a night owl than a morning person). So now to my question: If you only had a $5k-$10k starting investment, wanted to day trade and were relatively new to trading (but willing to study and learn) what instrument would YOU trade? What is the best platform to trade it? PS. Sorry for the long winded post but I figure the more info you have the easier to answer the questions.
If you feel compelled/constrained to daytrade, focus on something that's highly liquid and that also has decent volatility, not excessive volatility. High liquidity will reduce your slippage. Decent volatility will allow for your trades to work out. Consider trading the eMini S&P, 10-year note, gold, corn, crude oil and the euro-currency. Those will be more than enough to keep you busy.
You can open a mini spot forex account with only like $300....in my opinion the spot forex market is a tough market to trade but it's a great (and cheap) way to transition into the 'zero sum' marketplace. Or if you decide on futures, look at the 10year note, mini gold & silver, or the grains. They are volitile markets but they have a lot of liquidity and (in my opinion) move slower than index futures. The real low margin requirments also allow for you too swing trade and hold positions overnight, which is real nice. I only suggest those other future instruments because with only 5k, and trading futures for the first time, you'll get your ass handed too you trading the index futures.
So what is a good broker/platform (other than IB) for futures like the grains and possibly the index futures? I say other than IB because I have DL'ed and looked at the IB Demo when I was thinking about trading Forex. I really didn't like it.