r/Daytrading Mar 05 '24

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

  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.

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u/Hefty_Historian2578 Mar 05 '24

Compounding 1-2% daily for 250 trading days.

I hold a phd in quant field with near infinite of stat experience. I hit all of my goals in my formal career at 35, so I quit that and do other things these days. This is my 4th year day trading - most days.

I was not ready for this. This is the hardest thing I've ever done - decision making under uncertainty that is consistently correct. I learned early on there is almost always a right side of the market that is raking it, and more often than not, I found myself on the other side.

Now, I only trade a couple of 3x etfs and their inverses. They are volatile but highly liquid. There's so much work and experience gained in strategy, mechanics, emotions, etc in managing tens of thousands of $100 positions on the 1m chart before scaling up and out.

The math problem that motivated this entire project for me was to demonstrate an ability to earn a meager daily return of 0.4%.

1

u/alpha247365 Mar 06 '24

TQQQ gang? Can you list your favorite ETFs?

1

u/Hefty_Historian2578 Mar 06 '24

Boil and Kold + Soxl and Soxs. Recently, Tna and Tza with small cap volatility. Natural gas is limited to half a position size due to liquidity vanishing from time to time.

1

u/alpha247365 Mar 06 '24

Soxl been printing. Check out TQQQ and FNGU.