As of Jan 7, 2025, the average annual pay for a Day Trader in the United States is $96,774 a year. Just in case you need a simple salary calculator, that works out to be approximately $46.53 an hour. This is the equivalent of $1,861/week or $8,064/month.
Earning ₹1,000 per day from the stock market through multiple trades with small profits requires a disciplined approach. Focus on intraday trading in highly liquid stocks or indices like Nifty and Bank Nifty, where price movements are frequent.
Indeed, you can start day trading with $10,000. It's a decent capital foundation that allows for considerable flexibility in trading. However, the amount of profit you can make or the success you can achieve is influenced by numerous factors such as your trading strategy, market conditions, and risk tolerance.
However, a widely accepted figure suggests that a successful day trader can pull between 1% to 2% of their account balance per day. For a $50,000 trading account, this equates to approximately $500 to $1,000 per day. Do keep in mind that these figures are not guaranteed, but merely a general estimate.
You're really probably going to need closer to 4,000 or $5,000 in order to make that $100 a day consistently. And ultimately it's going to be a couple of trades a week where you total $500 a week, so it's going to take a little bit more work.
One popular method is the 2% Rule, which means you never put more than 2% of your account equity at risk (Table 1). For example, if you are trading a $50,000 account, and you choose a risk management stop loss of 2%, you could risk up to $1,000 on any given trade.
A typical day trading profit per day is between 0.033 and 0.13 percent. This corresponds to a monthly profit of between 1 and 10 percent for successful day traders. However, only a few traders are successful in the long term - most make losses.
$3,000 X 12 months = $36,000 per year. $36,000 / 6% dividend yield = $600,000. On the other hand, if you're more risk-averse and prefer a portfolio yielding 2%, you'd need to invest $1.8 million to reach the $3,000 per month target: $3,000 X 12 months = $36,000 per year.
George Soros is perhaps the most renowned trader in the world, famous for “breaking the Bank of England” in 1992. His audacious bet against the British pound earned his fund over $1 billion in a single day.
Many people have made millions just by day trading. Some examples are Ross Cameron, Brett N. Steenbarger, etc. But the important thing about day trading is that only a few can make money out of day trading and the rest end up losing their entire capital in day trading.
Swing trading is most suitable for beginners due to this low speed.
It is possible to earn money with day trading and make a living from it and generate high income - but the chances are extremely low. A maximum of three percent of all traders achieve long-term profits; the vast majority lose large sums of money.
You'd report most sales and other capital transactions and calculate capital gain or loss on Form 8949, Sales and Other Dispositions of Capital Assets, then summarize your capital gains and deductible capital losses on Schedule D (Form 1040), Capital Gains and Losses.
Day Trading
In the U.S., pattern day trader (PDTs)—those who perform four or more day trades within five business days—are subject to the pattern day trader rule. This requires a minimum account balance of $25,000.
Fixed Deposits (FDs): Safe but lower returns (7% return needs an 86 lakh investment for 50K monthly). Dividend Income: Invest in dividend-paying stocks (average 7% yield needs an 85 lakh investment for 50K monthly).
If you're starting from scratch, online millionaire calculators (which return a variety of results given the same inputs) estimate that you'll need to save anywhere from $13,000 to $15,500 a month and invest it wisely enough to earn an average of 10% a year.
Can You Live on 3000 a Month? Whether $3000 a month is good for you depends on the number of family members you have and the quality of living you want to sustain. If you're single and don't have a family to take care of, $3000 is enough to get you through the month comfortably.
Some of the best trading strategies for day trading include: Scalping: This involves making numerous small trades throughout the day, aiming to gain a few cents per trade. Volume is key. Traders rely on many trades to build significant profits.
Day trading is not worth it for the vast majority of day traders. Anecdotally, it's been widely estimated that 95% of day traders ultimately lose money, and it's been empirically demonstrated that about the same percentage of unprofitable day traders continue despite losing money.
What Is the 2% Rule? The 2% rule is an investing strategy where an investor risks no more than 2% of their available capital on any single trade. To implement the 2% rule, the investor first must calculate what 2% of their available trading capital is: this is referred to as the capital at risk (CaR).
On a funded account, losing a large amount of money does not mean much. Even if it results in losing your funded account, you can still try to pass the evaluation at the same firm again or just join another one. Ultimately, you do not risk much and do not lose much. That is not the case with a personal live account.
Funds typically investing in high-risk sectors, such as shares of companies in developed overseas markets. These funds offer high potential for long-term returns, but also experience large day-to-day price movements, and so present a significant risk that the value of your investment could fall.