The best magazine
Unfortunately people don't start looking to swing trading as an alternative income source until they need income.
This is the absolute wrong time to consider day trading.
Honestly, what you are really considering is gambling, day trading just sounds more justifiable the roulette.
Day trading involves finding a statistically small advantage and repeating your strategy with extreme precision.
Here is the problem with small advantages; they require really large bankrolls to make a decent income and a really large bankroll in order to survive draw downs.
Trading on a tight budget requires you to trade hoping for the long tail of the statistics where you get a hot streak.
Unfortunately if you're running near odds win / loss trade strategy you are just as likely to catch a long losing streak.
These long losing streaks will take you out of the day trading game.
You will be much further ahead to open a practice account and look for a regular job.
If over the course of saving your first trading account you still enjoy trading your practice account and have a winning strategy then and only then are you ready to attempt your day trading career.
So just how much money do you need to start this day trading career? In my experience a realistic trade strategy for a day trader new comer will have 2% of their account at risk with an average win to loss ratio of 3:1 and a win percentage of 50%.
Unless you're scalping which will have a much different win / loss statistics, you'll probably only find one or two trades a day.
So if you want to make $100 a day and your average 4% on each trade then you need to trade $2500 each time.
Since you're putting 2% of your account at risk you need $1250,000 to safely trade this strategy and earn your daily wage (which wasn't that high of a wage.
) Please don't use short term trading as an escape from your money troubles, but as a goal for your future.
Taking three to five years of practice and learning while you build your war chest up is the best thing you can do for your trading career.
Source: ...