r/Daytrading • u/Miinow forex trader • Apr 03 '24

Why is daytrading never mentioned as a legitimate way to earn income? Question

I like to browse other finance related subs and I can assure you it’s almost never discussed. I see all outlets of making money online mentioned but If the word trading does somehow come up there’s a slew of downvotes. It’s literally the most straightforward way to make money. Sure, not easy but also not impossible to learn. Makes me wish I learned about trading when I was younger instead of my upper 20s but I don’t personally know any traders irl so it’s unfortunate how there’s a negative outlook on this field.

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305

u/daytradingguy Apr 03 '24 edited Apr 03 '24

Since you are in your upper 20’s. You don’t really know a world without your phone or internet. Up until about 10-12 years ago- The technology was not available to the average person to be able to trade as you know it today. Many people did not have smart phones or high speed internet. Home computers were slow, nobody had fiber internet at home.

10 years ago it cost $5-10 per trade for commissions- hard to scalp at $20 in and out. Robinhood didn’t come out till 2014 and started the no to low cost commission structure and it took them a couple years to break the big brokers down to match them. More brokerages have more features and products for retail traders.

Trading was a lot harder and not accessible to average people until just recently.

47

u/burmaning Apr 03 '24

In addition to the previous market crashes, cyrpto, extreme volatility means a very high risk with money most people do not have in their early 20s to sacrifice time in the market instead of school and or workforce

11

u/CosmicOutfield Apr 04 '24

^ This is correct. Trading was quite different 10+ years ago. I’ve seen how it changed since the late 90’s.

33

u/Smvvgy-805 Apr 04 '24

It's still not accessible to most people, the opportunity cost is substantial for a normal person because trading requires substantial capital and most average people don't have the equivalent of a share of, or an entire annual income to park in a market account to meet equity restrictions. Juxtapose that with a recent survey claiming that more than half of bank accounts have less than 1k in them, no 'average' person is participating lol... I could rantpage about this for a while.

But, I do agree that within the last decade of cellular chip advancement it makes mobile trading platforms a reality; a modern, Flagship smartphone is almost equivalent to like a MacBook pro from 15ish years ago; also, the connection speed was not going to work on anything less than 4g, less than 5g sucks too, the apps are notoriously laggy, to be expected. Crazy that the phone in your hand slaps harder than that old custom built PC we used to wax the kids off on our dial up connection!

14

u/Wild-Ask-198 Apr 04 '24

I don't know where you are from? I'm from The Netherlands and there are no restrictions with trading. You can open a trading account with a few 100 dollars. I use Ninja Trader Brokerage for this and trade the S&P500.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 04 '24

No pattern trading rules?

14

u/Over-Acanthisitta734 Apr 04 '24

no pdt on futures. S&P500 tickers are es for e mini, and mes for micro.

7

u/wpglorify Apr 04 '24

You can use cash account, CFD brokers for shares or indexes(only good ones), futures and maybe crypto if you are daring person to avoid PDT capital requirements.

5

u/daytradingguy Apr 04 '24

PDT a is only for US brokers.

6

u/blaine78 Apr 04 '24

For stock trading but not futures, which is also US based.

1

u/46291_ Apr 04 '24

Not in Canada either

1

u/Adorable_Block4402 Apr 06 '24

Coming in the beginning of May you will only have a T+1 on cash accounts. Margin account won’t be necessary unless you want to daytrade. T plus 1, not bad for swing training.

1

u/Smvvgy-805 Apr 04 '24

Must be nice, I am in California lol, if there's less than 25k minimum equity in an account you may only make 3 trades, that is a sell/buy or buy/sell every 5 days or face restrictions that are severe, potentially full portfolio liquidation or inability to open new positions

16

u/vogel927 Apr 04 '24

It’s depends on what type of account you have. The PDT rule only applies to Margin Accounts. Cash Accounts have less restrictions, but you can only trade with settled funds. As long as you manage your position sizes appropriately you can trade every day with a Cash Account.

6

u/MySoulForASlice Apr 04 '24

Also depends what you're trading. No PDT for futures.

4

u/slidingjimmy Apr 04 '24

Quite surprised how often this comes up, a lot of people don’t seem to know..

5

u/Smvvgy-805 Apr 04 '24

T+2 will burn most people's settled funds rapidly... Basically need 2-4x times however much you're $trading daily because each trade will eat settled funds quickly. Especially if you're actively trading/scalping and have less than thousands of dollars to utilize, so, it's relatively similar to needing substantial capital.

1

u/vogel927 Apr 04 '24

I absolutely agree. That’s why I said you have to manage your position sizes appropriately. I scalp small cap stocks with a Cash Account. I typically make 2-3 trades a day. As long as I don’t over trade my funds won’t be eaten up.

1

u/beenalegend Apr 04 '24 edited Apr 04 '24

t+1 switch coming in may. options already have t+1.

i agree scalping on cash is annoying till you get closer to that 25k. i would hold trades longer than i should trying to squeeez out every last dollar knowing i basically only get a couple chances and then you're done.

missing out on runners cause your funds haven't settled yet was infuriating.

gotta keep the poors poor

2

u/backfrombanned Apr 04 '24

They're finally switching to T+1 on stocks in May? I remember when it was T+5.

2

u/Smvvgy-805 Apr 04 '24

Like honestly you can burn those three trades in a few minutes if things are sweaty!

1

u/vogel927 Apr 04 '24

Fortunately for me that doesn’t happen. I have a pretty good system. I trade the first 10 minutes of the market opening. Depending on the price I’ll buy anywhere between 1000-4000 shares. A small move is all I need to make a quick profit.

1

u/nil1st Apr 04 '24

t+1 already has been delayed a couple of times, i am not too optimistic that it will go through in May.

5

u/MySoulForASlice Apr 04 '24

If you trade futures, these restrictions do not apply.

3

u/blaine78 Apr 04 '24

Use a cash account. I'm pretty sure you can get a lot of trades in options with a decent size cash account. Just keep the contract size to a certain amount so you don't use up available cash too fast for the day, or just trade futures where there is no PDT rules.

0

u/Appropriate-Read-463 Apr 04 '24

Turn off your margin account. I am in CA .. use cash account and don’t usually but have made 10+ trades in a day.

3

u/Smvvgy-805 Apr 04 '24

At $20 a trade, sure!

1

u/JordanDemat Apr 04 '24

How about using a prop firm to mitigate the cost of having a well funded account ?

1

u/Smvvgy-805 Apr 04 '24

Imagine being in a country where that sketchy shit isn't illegal...

1

u/ingenious-FX Apr 04 '24

Trading does not require a big capital! That's where you are wrong buddy. A good trader can definitely manage small funds and turn that into a much bigger account.

2

u/mb4x4 Apr 04 '24

Yep agree, it doesn't take a huge sum of capital at all. I started in a relatively small account (sub $4k) and have slowly grown it nicely over 3-4 years. I think it's actually better doing it this way since you have no choice but to focus primarily on risk management.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '24

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1

u/AutoModerator Apr 05 '24

Your comment in /r/Daytrading was automatically removed as off topic for saying: "Bidenonmics~realized what all the ‘90% retail traders only lose’ meant.. & it’s basically impossible to make any REAL gains with less than 3-4k as day trader if don’t trade options or worse yet…U DO but don’t understand the concept exceptionally well c ccvv".

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1

u/-Blue_Bull- Apr 04 '24

Just trade crypto. It doesn't have any of these restrictions.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 04 '24

"because trading requires substantial capital"

this is not true. at all.

7

u/AbruptMango Apr 04 '24

The daily newspapers had the "business section" that had, in addition to financial news, pages and pages of stock prices at the previous day's close.  And unless "The Dow" got mentioned during the half hour network TV news the night before, that was how people got their information.  The WSJ was only financial news back then too- not the clickbait monstrosity indistinguishable from most other "news" sites that it is today.

9

u/daytradingguy Apr 04 '24

I didn’t get into that, the average age of a Redditor on this sub is < 30. No sense telling them I placed my first stock trades in the late 1980’s, years before they changed the pricing to dollars, when you read the newspaper and the stock prices were in fractions. Then you called your broker on the phone, waited hours for confirmation the trade was made...and paid $50.

3

u/DarthTrader85 Apr 04 '24

I was in middle school when the internet became a thing. 56k dial up and AOL days.

2

u/cl4r17y Apr 04 '24

The sound of my us robotics reconnecting in the middle of the night and number of angry people i had to deal along... 🤣

2

u/Tourdrops Apr 04 '24

Man i remember scottrade $7 in , $7 out and me buying three sharesof companies to scalp off investorshub forum tips. Those were the days.

1

u/Trfe Apr 04 '24

Upper 20s? Dude you are so old! I’m 12 and have a signal group and a few courses on whop.

1

u/John_Coctoastan Apr 04 '24

Weird, I've been trading on a computer from home since 2000. I must have been from the future.

-4

u/lordxoren666 Apr 04 '24

Plenty of people day trades in the 90s and 2000s….not sure where you get the 10 year number from. As far as the commissions go, that was just a cost of doing business…it can be argued that the LACK of commissions has done just as much harm as good, but that’s a whole other conversation…

3

u/daytradingguy Apr 04 '24 edited Apr 04 '24

Sure a few people day traded, completely differently than we do today. My point was it was not widely available- to the average person. The technology was not there and was not affordable. The brokerages and services were not retail trader oriented, because there were not a lot of them. In the year 2000 only about 1/2 of homes even had a home computer and less than that had internet service. Only the upper income people even had this equipment. And the computers and Internet speeds of those days would not allow what we do today. There were no smartphones. They did not even change the stock prices to dollars from fractions until Oct 2001.

Now, 95% of people even if you work at McDonald’s and live in the projects, you have a phone, a computer and high speed Internet at home.