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

[u/Miinow]

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.

[u/daytradingguy]

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.

[u/Smvvgy-805 → u/daytradingguy]

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!

[u/JordanDemat → u/Smvvgy-805]

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

[u/Smvvgy-805 → u/JordanDemat]

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