Sowbug, i started daytrading with $8000.
I guess, there is no general answer to your question, it just depends on what YOU want. My opinion is, as long as you dont want to daytrade for a living you can do so even with $7000..but its tough and you have to adjust your trading style. Of course you cant do scalping, it just wont work. The only way to go is to look for volatility, which implies an 'even driven' trading style. this is how I call it and I practice this style for about 6 months now (additionally, i dont short stocks). It is essentially based on three tools: DATEK, the streaming real time limit book data of ISLAND at 'gritch' and the discussion 'forum' at #daytraders. The channel at irc allows me to follow events nearly real time (be it on the wires or on CNBC) and at the same time i can check whether people are buying/selling a certain stock watching the order queue at ISLAND. Additionally, i can adjust my orders so that i can get a nearly perfect execution with DATEK. (well with red hot stocks going verticallly within seconds it doesnt work :) )Sure your technical tools should be perfect(high speed connect, redundancy, several monitors; i have 1 ISDN line, 2 different ISP's with different backbones, 2 computers, 5 monitors).
You may wonder why i am using DATEK. Well, i am still looking for a 'soes firm' but so far i just cant make up my mind. One reason is if you are trading with only $7000 to $10000 monthly fees of 300$ and more for your trading tools is quite a lot. On the other hand doing more than 50 tickes per month to get your tools for free is 'hard a the limit' at least for me because i cant daytrade every day.
Another point is, i think when you have to do your own order routing this might actually not help if you are using an event driven trading style. How can you decide whithin seconds in a volatile market to route your order to an ECN, or send a broadcast, or do a selectnet order or whatever? So far I havent found an answer to this yet, tho im following all threads in this area. Sometimes i think people are using these wonderful tools (RealTick, Cybert, Killkey, Watcher.. ) only to preference ECN's like Island because its easier. But then, whats the difference to trade with DATEK? Am i missing something here?
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