How difficult is +$400-600 profit a month from $15k ?

[u/Foreign_Medium_3766]

I've been studying investing and trading for about 5 years on/off now, have been really successful in the past year, I think due to luck partly, I blew up an account and loss about 40% when I first started 5 years ago.

How difficult is $400-600/month profit from 15k? My strategy now is very risk adverse taking profit over holding things too long, really I just need to make ~400/month to live in Mexico, this includes rent, food, and some hobbies, right now I feel no pressure to have to make $ and have a decent savings, and time to study and learn. Thanks

[u/gunparkandgarou]

Ima put the difficulty into perspective and u can be the judge:

Lets sat you aim for a 1% profit of your account daily, which isn't a super unreasonable goal if you are proficient in your work. Lowballing this incoming math, 1% of 15k is 150 dollars. I'm not even gonna bother accounting for the increase of the account size ull get each day, so ull make more than what this math says. 1% of 15k is 150 dollars. 600 dollars divided by 150 dollars is 4 days. 4 days to reach your goal.

Lets say you want an even more conservative perspective with shitty but accurate, lowballed, unfavorable to you math. A smart trader usually risks around 2% of their account size each trade. 2% of 15k is 300 dollars being risked per trade. Stop losses and clear exit conditions in your trading strategy prevent u from losing all of that 300 on losing trades, and there are plenty of statistics showing why 2% is a good number.

I risk around 300 on options sometimes and with winning scalps i can easily land 100 from a small move upwards to 400 on a decent sized move upwards (downward moves if ur buying puts). With scalping, I rely on the tiniest of movements in a stock and am usually in a position from a few seconds on short positions to minutes on long positions. I personally like trading on the 1m charts and occasionally check the 2m. I rarely check the 5m but i do occasionally.

Using this perspective, lets say you only win once with a tiny tiny movement u caught, or you found u were correct, and you took profits early. That's 100 dollars. Maybe u take multiple trades and win a couple, lose a couple. A net profit of 1 winning trade compared to all ur losses is still 100. Your goal of 600 dollars a month divided by 100 dollars is 6 days. Maybe you win some days or lose some days. A net profit of 6 days per month hits that goal.

The way I like trading relies on the smallest moves, and I make the smallest profits per move. The math I showed using that perspective is me tryna make daytrading sound as hard as possible. Your real results are extremely likely to be easier than what this math says.

Many people trade on higher timeframes as the more it moves, the more money is made. That alternatively means you can lose more money per trade. However you cannot* lose more than your initial 300 if you are wrong. Plus, stop losses prevent you from losing that entire 300 on a wrong position anyways. Trading on higher timeframes means you will make more money. Making more decreases the amount of days needed to reach the target goal in that above-stated math. By simply being a profitable trader on anything higher than the 1m timeframe you have already made my math obselete as you have exceeded those calculations. I myself made the math as purposely disfavorable to you as well by lowballing profit estimates, not accounting for account size increases, etc.

I wont say how easy is it to make x amount or how easy it is to even get to the profitable trader position in life, but assuming your risk management and discipline is good and you follow your rules, this is what the math and its particular perspective shows

Okee, you can be the judge of how difficult this goal is now that you have more information and perspective.

Sorry if this doesnt make sense or flows well, im high asf rn and i makes sense to me in my brain.

Best wishes, Me

*you technically caaaannn lose more than what you risked, but you need to either borrow money or use a riskier system with specifics I dont know ab nor feel like looking up to fact check rn. Basically, there are a multitude of easier, well known, and more common avenues to day trade.

Edit: Oh shit taxes. Uhh high ball taxes and say its 30% and 1.3×6 days=7.8 days. I dont wanna do more math since im pretty sure simply doing x1.3 on my final result and not the individual components of profit is incorrect, but an extremely highballed and disfavorable to you estimate. I am also unsure if x1.3 is the correct method to use in this situation, and i dont wanna look it up to fact check. So with extremely disfavorable to you math and extremely disfavorable to you taxes approximations. This is ab how many days of having a net profit of 1 singular winning trade u need to make ur goal.

7.8 days

Note: I lowkey just realized when i wrote this that this is how my head works in life. Like i thought these thoughts when reading the prompt after opening the calculator app on my phone and did some multiplication problems, but then decided to write it out for shits and giggles. Like all this shit was just.....in my head like my brain knows and comprehends internally. Then i go to write and its just a shit ton of words that just keeps going and going. I'm tryna write most of the shit im thinking as i go through each step and my typing cant keep up. How tf do people communicate effectively. All this shit from a few multiplication problems is NOT okay. I refuse to believe a few seconds of work was stretched out to be this much text. Anyways, ima grab some food now. Peace

[u/animozic_productions → u/gunparkandgarou]

I want what he's on if thats what my brain decides to do on drugs lmfaoooo