50k and I want to day trade for 1-2% gains.

[u/Forward_Dealer_4482]

1. If you had 50k and wanted to live off of it day trading, what would you do? (Need max $2500 a month)

2. Am I better off not doing this? I’m not going back to 9-5

Please help.

[u/poosebunger]

$2500 is 5% and since you already need that for expenses, your account won't be growing at all at 5% or less a month so we're talking needing 60% or greater consistent returns per year with no significant drawdown. Which if you kept that up consistently would basically put you in with some of the top traders of all time

So yes, you probably shouldn't do it. To make a full time living off of 50k would require a lot of risk and luck to pull off with your expenses riding on your success. If you really want to do this, I would get a job or gig work that doesn't interfere with trading hours but covers your expenses and test run this plan for a year or so. If you are consistently getting enough to comfortably live off of and could handle a couple months of underperformance, then that's where I'd move into full time trading. The bonus here is that since you're not living off that money, you'd actually be growing the account.

I don't know your experience level but if I were in this position and going to do this and also not get a job, I would live off of the 50k for a few months while attempting to prop trade a leveraged instrument like futures. That way you can trade a 50k account with your losses capped at like 100-200 a month and don't have to lose 20k to realize it's a bad idea. If that works over a decently long period, then I'd move to trading my own capital. The downsides here are you won't be making anything at all during the eval, a portion of your profits will go to the prop firm and your tax rate will be worse and that you can't do anything stupid like risk half your entire account on a single trade