I guess $100,000 today is like $10,000 30 years ago. It's what people have now. $100,000 is the new $10,000 $100,000 is not a whole lot of money anymore or known as purchasing power. duet to inflation. It's not the amount you start with that matters but there is min. to make it worthwhile or enough drawdown in losing streaks. Some traders lose 9 in a row and their account blown away. In five trades all losses. it' like 90% wrong. probability is 10% You are only right 10% of the time or WRONG 90% of the time. which is worse than flipping a coin. Test your trader expectancy and you get the report on your performance. http://www.marketcentral.ca/expectancy/traderecord.xlsx You be surprise how many traders don't even enter or record their trades. and then wonder they lose in the game. And retail investors don't even read the SEC report and spend 5 minutes doing it before investing $20,000 in a stock and wonder why they loss in their investment. $30,000 30 years ago was same as $250,000 in today's money
I didn't think you could day trade stocks with less than 25K because of the pattern day trading rule. As a professional what do you think is a reasonable return for a retail trader to expect. My thinking is anything over the index. A consistent 15 to 20% would be above average. Inflated expectations is one of the main reasons trades fail. To the question of how big an account you need it depends on your expected returns and how much to plan to make.
Every new trader needs to watch that video . He has 2 incredible tips why he failed . #1 reading zero hedge which is 100% negative and skews your thought process . #2 shorting stocks destroyed him. The mkt goes up 70% of the time so odds stacked against you shorting . I'd advise no new trader shorts till he learns to win long . Just my opinion . I always like to say when i short i have eyes in the back of my head .
I would suggest the opposite. New traders often let losses run because they hope the market will come back. Being short and knowing that there is a good chance the market will keep going up forces the new trader to honour their stops. It's hard to turn a trade into an investment when you're short.
Were talking trades here not longer term holds . Actually to be honest i'd recommend few people ever short outside a few min to hr scalp . Actually any trader with years of trading what his biggest loss is and its from shorting 95% of the time . I'm basically a very very short term trader so shorting is ok for me but like you said people have trouble taking loses and if you can't in shorts you'll not be a trader long .
Trust me aslong as it is not your money, the funds in your account are more of a trouble then a solution.
Re PDT 25k rule that's for margin accounts, true. But traders can daytrade much smaller cash accounts. Trading in a sep IRA greatly simplifies taxes, too.... though no shorting. Agree with hafez re shorting is risky, I don't short, though I go long inverses which is short bias. A reasonable expectation re trading is you will lose all money and blow up several accounts. The learning is curve is a fucking bear. I'm a UCLA grad plus former statistician for Ford with 164 IQ and it took years before my first profitable year as a trader. And I still trade chickenshit size, and make more from teaching than trading. Whenever I speak at Moneyshow events I caution folks that most won't even get to be breakeven til at least 5 years and even that is unlikely. Faces of newbies fall, while veterans nod in agreement. Imho traders should not trade live capital til they are consistently profitable on sim trading.
Not really... T+n (usually n = 2) would greatly impair ones ability to make consecutive trades, unless trading very small positions of very low priced (nominally speaking) stocks. Commissions may even be the deciding factor for placing such (day)trades.
3months since I went back to $10 trade size, dropped to $1 and just take stupid trades all day long, back on $10 and all good, have bad days, then some near $1K days. Grindy is fine, just play BB range when flat, makes enough, need more trades obviously. Generally do NY open +1.5hours for an hour, find NQ has a good trend period there.