Start here.
Five things to read before you take another setup off the internet. Written for anyone trading intraday — stocks, futures, options or forex, own capital or a firm’s.
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01
What day trading really costs
Commissions, exchange fees, market data, platform, slippage and tax. Most people count none of these and call the difference income.
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02
The Record
Every session I have traded since 2025, in one table. Start at the first row and read forward — the early days are the honest part.
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03
The one setup
One strategy on one timeframe. Position size, daily loss limit, the hours I trade and the point at which I stop.
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04
Why most people lose
It isn’t the strategy. It’s having twelve of them — switching after every red week, and never running one long enough to know if it worked.
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05
The tools I pay for
What I use, what it costs, and what I’d cancel first if the month went badly.
Questions people actually ask
How much do day traders make?
There is no reliable single figure, and that is the honest answer. Salary aggregators disagree with each other by a factor of two, and most published estimates come from surveys or from companies selling something to traders. Independent studies consistently find the large majority of day traders lose money. The point of this site is to add one first-hand, month-by-month record to a subject where almost everything published is second-hand.
Is day trading income a salary?
No. There is no base, no guarantee and no floor. Income is whatever is left after a month’s gains, losses, commissions, exchange and regulatory fees, market data, platform costs and slippage. Two traders with identical gross figures can take home very different amounts.
Do you need $25,000 to day trade?
For pattern day trading US stocks in a margin account, yes — that is the FINRA pattern day trader rule. It does not apply to futures, which is a large part of why so many smaller accounts trade futures instead. Rules change, so check the current position with your broker rather than taking any website’s word for it.
How many strategies should you trade?
One, for long enough to produce a sample worth reading. Most traders cannot say whether their strategy failed or whether they stopped following it, because they changed both at once. A single setup run daily is the only version of this job where the numbers mean anything.
Own capital or a proprietary firm?
Both are routes to the same job. Trading your own account means you keep everything and risk everything. Trading a firm’s capital means a smaller share of the profit, rules you did not write, and a much smaller cheque to get started. The strategy does not change; the accounting does, and every report here states which applied.
What does day trading actually cost?
Commissions per round turn, exchange and regulatory fees, market data subscriptions, charting and journaling software, and slippage — the gap between the price you wanted and the price you got. The costs series covers each one with the figures I actually pay.
Every session, then the totals.
Every trading day goes up on the site after the close. Once a month I send the totals, what changed, and what I got wrong. Nothing here is sponsored.