How much cash do you need in your brokerage account to day trade? It's the age-old question beginner traders ask. Today, Vu shares his thoughts.

How Much Money Do You Need to Start Day Trading? (Day Trading for Beginners)

How much cash do you need in your brokerage account to day trade? It's the age-old question beginner traders ask.

Here’s the cold, hard truth about day trading…

We’re not saying this to scare you away from trading!

But it’s important to be realistic, so that we can prepare ourselves for what day trading requires.

Besides, there’s a reason most traders lose money. 

You can’t blame them though… there are so many online gurus who make it seem like day trading is easy… and they promise their followers fast cars and big mansions.

Unlike those guys, at Stock Navigators we tell you the opposite… we tell you the truth!

But it is a learnable, straightforward skill that can be developed with consistent practice. 

So whether you’re trading stocks, futures, cryptos, etc…

If you want to be one of the few who successfully hone the craft…

That means if you win money, someone else is losing it… and other people in the market are doing everything they can to beat you.

So we absolutely need to make sure that we have a step-by-step trading process. 

Planning your strategy is the most important part of the trading process.

Because you better bet everyone else has a battle plan.

And today, I’m going to share my trading battle plan with you.

Let’s get right into it, here’s my complete step-by-step process on how to get started with day trading.

1) Develop a trading power - What’s your edge?

This is what separates the winners from the losers.

In trading, someone always has to lose… so what’s your trading power to make sure you’re winning?

Whether it’s an education on technical analysis… or fundamental investing principles… insider trading information… or even the news…

Figure out your edge, and figure out how you’ll use it to execute trades. 

At Stock Navigators, our trading power is technical analysis. 

We teach people how to read the stock market - click here to see how other people are using our trading strategies.

2) Open a trading account and start trading with paper money

Look, if you want to get good at trading… you gotta learn how to use your tools.

It takes a couple months just to get a “natural feel” for the trading program you’re using.

How to send in an order, buy at the market price, limit order to sell, Whether it’s ThinkorSwim… or TradeStation…or any platform you pick and choose to execute your trades.

You’ve also got to learn how to play the stock market.

So when you first start trading, do it on a simulated account.

Use paper money to trade while you learn the ropes… and learn how to use your trading program.

Recording your progress is the fastest way to improve your trading results.

When you’re starting to make consistent profits on your simulated account, it’s time for the real deal.

Put some cash in your account and start trading with real money.

As a general rule of thumb, you should only risk 2% of your account per trade.

This way, you prevent overtrading… which is a fast way to destroy your portfolio.

5) Join a community of like-minded traders 

Once you’re making consistent profits on your own, the fastest way to scale your gains is by bouncing ideas off of other traders.

There’s a quote that says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”

If you’ve been searching for a community of like-minded traders… Stock Navigators may be the place for you.

If you’d like to develop your technical trading skills alongside other successful traders, click here to learn more about Stock Navigators.

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to trade a lot of stocks to make a lot of money.

For example, all I trade is the E-Mini S&P 500 futures (ES).

Last Monday, I got in at this double bottom pattern…

I took about 11 points in six minutes of trading.

I’ll show you how much profit that is in a second.

Last Tuesday, I traded the ES again - like I said, I trade it every single day.

I got in at the break of this bear flag here…

And I took around 15 points or so in 5 minutes of trading.

Then on Wednesday, I got in at this downtrend line break…

Took around nine points with a beautiful four confirmation trade.

11 points on Monday is about $550 per contract

15 points on Tuesday is about $750 per contract

9 points on Wednesday is about $450 per contract

You can invest $500 and literally double your money in one day if you trade this way.

And then you do this over… and over… and over…

As your portfolio grows, your profits will scale exponentially.

That’s the power of trading one single stock - or in this case the S&P 500 futures - every single day.

If you want to start trading like this, click here to learn more about the Stock Navigators trading method.

How Much Money You Can Make Day Trading One Stock

If you just started trading a few months ago, then make sure you do these three things.

Because truth be told, the reason most traders lose money is because they don’t follow these three fundamental trading principles.

If you simply do these three things, you’ll be more prepared than 90% of the retail traders out there today. 

That’s why today, I’m breaking down the basics. 

I’m going to review the top 3 fundamental trading tips that every beginner needs to know.

Fundamental Trading Tip #1: Define your goals

The very first thing you need to do is know your goals.

Do you want to create daily income with your trading… or do you want to buy and hold for a long time?

Make sure your goals are realistic and feasible.

For example, if you want to create daily income, do you have the time to spend every morning 9:30AM ET to day trade?

If you have a fulltime job that won’t let you trade like that, then you’ll have to swing trade instead.

Not only that… you’ve also got to think about how long you want to trade.

If you’re day trading, you’ll have to spend two hours per day every morning trading the market.

Swing traders can get away with two horus per trading every few weeks.

But either way, you’ve got to consider how much time you’re willing to spend on your trading.

It’s perfectly okay to decide you’d rather be lazy and swing trade instead of day trade.

It all depends on your lifestyle and your personal preferences.

After you’ve nailed down your goals, you can move on to the next tip.

Fundamental Trading Tip #2: Know your risk tolerance

Do you want something that’s high-risk-high-reward, or do you want something more conservative?

Your risk tolerance will be based on your goals, which is why it comes second.

If you’re simply trying to build a retirement portfolio, your risk tolerance would be low because you don’t want much fluctuation.

But since your risk is low, your reward is also lower… but this would be okay if you don’t plan on touching your retirement portfolio for another few decades.

However, if you want to make as much income as possible from the stock market, you’d have a higher risk tolerance.

That’s why at Stock Navigators, we show you how to manage your risk.

After all, higher rewards come with higher risk, and we do everything we can to stack the odds in our favor.

If you have a 1:3 risk-reward ratio (risking $1 to earn $3)...

You’d only have to win 26% of your trades to profit.

Imagine how quickly your portfolio grows if you win just 50% of your trades!

To learn more about how we manage risk at Stock Navigators, click here.

After you know your risk tolerance, it’s time for the final tip.

Fundamental Trading Tip #3: Know a good trading strategy, and how to use it

The final step is learning a good trading strategy.

There are plenty of Youtube videos that can teach you technical analysis, how to read a chart, etc.

At Stock Navigators, we Echo Map the stock market.

Echo Mapping has done pretty well for our students.

If you want to learn more about the Echo Mapping strategy, we recently recorded a special podcast called, How to Use Echo Mapping to Spot Winning Investments Before They Take Off.

Right now, you can watch this special Echo Mapping podcast for free - click here to see what Echo Mapping can do for you.

These 3 tips are the best way to build a strong foundation for your trading. If you're new to trading, start here.

Technical analysis (TA) shows us many things about the market.

With TA, we can determine low points (Buy Zone) and high points (Sell Zone).

In fact, using TA we can also identify our stop-loss price. 

But there’s something else TA can show us… It’s the most important factor when deciding to trade a stock… And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. 

It’s as natural as the ebb and flow of the ocean tide.

Our job as traders is to identify these lows and highs.

However, just because a stock is at a low point does not mean that we should move into it right away.

There’s something else that needs to happen before we can confidently enter a trade.

I’m talking about Wall Street participation. 

(A low stock price) + (Wall Street participation) = high probability profits.

Nobody can make a stock move like the institutions on Wall Street.

The sheer amount of capital they use can cause wild swings in a stock’s price.

In fact, that’s why there’s strict regulation regarding Wall Street selloffs, specifically to prevent a huge, abrupt price swing. 

So when we see Wall Street make their move, it’s time for us to follow suit and make the trade.

How can you tell when Wall Street moves into a stock?

That’s easy - with technical analysis. 

And once you know what to look for… you’ll be able to immediately tell when Wall Street is making their move.

Let’s take a look at a real-life example.

Here’s a chart of the SPY since 2019…

Those big red bars show us that Wall Street was dumping their stock.

This caused the price to move down dramatically.

But the large green bars show us that as soon as Wall Street sold off… they decided to buy back in.

Ever since then, volume has remained relatively steady.
But every now and then we saw a huge, green spike… which tells us institutions were buying… and whenever we saw this spike… the price started moving higher…

And that’s how you spot Wall Street participation.

Whenever you see an abnormally large spike in volume, it means that financial institutions are making a move.

And we use that to our advantage, move into the trade, and position ourselves for a high-probability profit.

To learn more about Money Zones and tracking Wall Street’s actions, click here.

How To Follow Wall Street Into High-Probability Profits

When people first start trading, they focus on their win rate.

They try their best to have the highest win rate possible.

But contrary to popular belief, your win rate is not that important.

In fact… you can lose the majority of your trades… 

So today, I’m going to break down what you need to focus on first before you focus on your win rate.

This ratio is the amount of money you’re risking with each investment. 

A 1:1 ratio means you’re risking $1 to potentially make $1.

A 1:5 ratio means you’re risking $1 to potentially make $5.

If you just focus on trades that have good risk-return ratios, then you can profit even with a low win rate.

Which begs the question, what’s a good risk-return ratio?

Most people might say it’s 1:7… or even 1:10… but the answer is much lower than that.

So, let’s use the 26% win rate for example.

What does your risk-return ratio needs to be in order to profit with a 26% win rate?

By simply focusing on trades with a 1:3 risk-return ratio… you would profit with a 26% win rate.

At Stock Navigators, we use Echo Mapping to locate these high-probability trades. 

You can learn more about Echo Mapping in this special podcast, How to Use Echo Mapping to Spot Winning Investments Before They Take Off.

Echo Mapping shows you low-risk, high-reward trades before they start moving up.

It’s the foundation of the Stock Navigators trading strategy.

And right now you can watch this podcast, for free, to learn everything about Echo Mapping.

Click here now to watch the podcast for free.

A 26% Win Rate Is Profitable… If You Do This One Thing

Editor's Choice

Latest

Bottom Fishing Success! We Beat the S&P’s Yearly Average in One Week

Trading

Bottom Fishing Success! We Beat the S&P’s Yearly Average in One Week

Editor's Choice

I’m Bottom Fishing the Entire Stock Market for Double-Digit Profits

How to Profit from The Market’s Sideways Correction

Negative Trends and the Fed Will Determine Where the Market’s Headed

What Time is the Best Time to Day Trade? Hint: Before 12PM

How Much Money You Can Make Day Trading One Stock

Latest

How Much Money You Can Make Day Trading One Stock

Top 3 Tips for Beginner Traders

What Time is the Best Time to Day Trade? Hint: Before 12PM

A 26% Win Rate Is Profitable… If You Do This One Thing

It Takes One Year and One Day to Lower Your Stock Taxes

Latest posts

How Much Money Do You Need to Start Day Trading? (Day Trading for Beginners)

The Cold, Hard Truth About Day Trading

How Much Money You Can Make Day Trading One Stock

Top 3 Tips for Beginner Traders

How To Follow Wall Street Into High-Probability Profits

A 26% Win Rate Is Profitable… If You Do This One Thing