Is £30,000 per year achievable daytrading the FTSE? Is anyone doing it?

It certainly is do-able, the way the market has been recently, it makes it that little bit easier, I have made 1500 points in the last month alone, checking the market every hour. :cool:

All the best

James
 
I picked the £30k a year as a reasonable figure to aim for. I have more funds I can throw at this and probably will if I consistently prove that I can perform. Applying a rule of 36 points a day of allowable losses at £4 per point gives you £144 per day. If you use a 1% loss rule, that gives you a pot of £14,400 with which to play with. I was going to start with £20,000 in the trading account and see what happens. I use CFDs and am happy to pay taxes on profits. I haven't looked at too many of the spreadbetting platforms, but I have heard all sorts of complaints of requotes etc. I use IG markets who offer a 2 point spread, which I would like to reduce to 1point at some stage.

I got stung last year by a genuine surprise event on a high risk biotech share that I thought I had done an incredible amount of research on and was comfortable with the risk. My big mistake and I have learned a very expensive lesson. And yes, I did say high risk....
 
£30K is reasonble.
Thats just £600 pw ? or £125 each day ?
Here comes the dissapointment, aim to take 1K per week then you may achive 600.
With losses and emotional strain with a 20,000 pot you could end up drawing cash of that pot to live on.
How many weeks are you going to trade ? how many weeks ect ?
Taking 30K cash is achiveable however one has to know there game extreamly well.
Good Luck with this .
Tom
 
Thanks TomTom. The £20k is just the trading pot and not for living off. I can increase the pot if required. Just trying to optimise use of funds. I do wish I had starting scalping the FTSE a long time ago.
 
I aim for an average of 500 GBP a month with my 3K account - trading part time.

and I know I need to improve BIG TIME :)))
 
Not unless he is a position trader.

The reduced liquidity in the FTSE Futures means that you reach a glass ceiling in terms of how much you can make if you are a scalper or very short term trader.

But the other guys are right. 30k per year is nothing to get excited about. I've seen new grads that have never traded before have several months on the sim and then take 1k+ per day consistently out of that market.

If you want to make unlimited amounts in the FTSE you need to position trade.

t_d - Is the sim these grads are training on anything different to trading on IG Indexes platform and using their charting package? I do like their charting package, just wish it wasn't a split second behind their live quotes.
 
martin the prop guys like tom are working on systems miles ahead of what ig give you. work out why their chart package (which is awful) is not in line with prices.
 
If the systems right, should be easily acheivable, leverage can help, if you have a backtested system, why trade 30 pips at £4pp, when you can go 2 trades at 10 pips at £30pp, using the higher probability trades, less exposure to the Markets, in, profit and out and finished by lunchtime., all imho, hehe
 
IMO the thing that you need to be careful about is setting an average PnL per day!!!

I mean, if you have 2 break even days, you have to DOUBLE your target PnL for the week. You aren't giving yourself an allowance for, well real life. What if your internet goes down? What if you are hungover?

There are two issues here; 1) is it possible? Sure. but 2) I think you should extend your target PnL horizons beyond one Day, seriously. I mean, you will start saying "well, if I make 5 trades on average, I only need to make 6 points per trade..."

Sounds easy peasy lemon squeezy when you put it like that. You can only be sure it is possible when you are actually doing it - consistently making 150 ticks a week / 600 a month with real money (I mean, it is, but you need to do it first, right?). And I would also increase your target year end PnL too, just to be conservative. If you start on Jan 1st aiming for 60k, and after your first year of real trading have made the 30k, then you can give yourself a kick up the **** and do better the next year... if you aim for 30k and bring in 15k you're up sh!t creek.

Certaintly don't want to **** on your parade mate, honestly, but you are aiming FAR to near the breadline IMO, give yourself some room for being human and c0cking up occaisionally... it will happen.
 
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