Day Trading

First, to day trade stocks, brokerages will require a minimum account size of at least $25,000. Also, it's a risky game — very few people succeed at it. Those that do have generally become highly skilled at longer-term trading (position trading over several weeks, months or years or "swing trading" over days or weeks) before attempting day trading. There is no software you can use to make your decisions — that is totally up to you. It requires a great deal of experience (I would say, many years) to become a successful day trader.

I'm not sure if I understand your question….
Are you asking if its possible to have a career in day trading?
Sure, you can be a stock broker…
Or
Are you asking, if you can make a living (support yourself), by trading stocks.
In this case, I would say probably not.
Even professionals that have spent their lives studying the stock market have trouble predicting changes. What hope does that give to an average person? Furthermore stocks are meant to perform well in the 'long run' and not from day-to-day.
I suppose its possible to make constant gain if you index the 'entire market', however it probably won't be enough to let you quit your day job.

Nothing. You bought stock. You own the shares until you sell them. The stock price can fluctuate up or down–no way to tell in which direction–if you own it for more than a day.

If you trade on margin you borrow some of the funds that you use to purchase an investment. If the stock drops below a certain threshold, your broker may decide that you don't have enough equity to hold the investment and may force you to sell the stock. But that hopefully won't happen.

There were 14.3 million online investors at the end of 2000, 17.4 million at the end of 2001 and 20.6 million at the of 2002. With these figures you can calculate your trendline, growing at 125% pace every five years. That would be over 35 million online traders today. The source is a book by David Hallerman.

I believe this literally means that if you buy and sell a stock during the same trading day 4 or more times over the course of 5 trading days, you'll get labeled a "pattern day trader," which means you'll have some restrictions placed on you by your broker.

So if you bought and sold 100 MSFT 4 times in 2 days, let's say (and if these 4 trades were more than 6% of your total trades during these 2 days–which is very likely), you'd get labeled a "pattern day trader."

Day trading is very risky and you should only try that with extra income that you can live without. Since you are asking this question I know you are not qualified to trade at that level. Most brokers will want you to have at least $25,000.00 deposited in your account before you can Daytrade so you need to be aware of that. The stock market can be very lucrative but you must know what you are doing.

I use Scottrade and love it! The stream from Scott works great. I don't know about BofA, but I suspect it's comparable. I'd think again about using Scottrade, they do one thing only and are very good at it. BofA does hundreds of things, some good, some not so good.

You need to take into account that a day trade that has
made a good profit can go into the floor broker‘s or
desk trader‘s pocket. This is possible as he can leave
buyer/seller‘s name in blank and only fill it in when
reported or taken from the runner (the boy that picks up
the slips from the floor). In some markets this is not
possible since the whole deal (except the shouting) is
immediately recorded. But when trading is wild, a fast
light is put on, which allows 15 minutes to conclusion
instead of only five. I could give you many examples
but this is sufficient to convince you to change both
your trading house and/or floor broker or, better still
both. Find a floor broker that you know and trust, this
is the only solution. It is almost impossible to always
be the loser, so think twice and change your servers.

Goldberg and Lupercio, two analysts of the online trading industry, estimated that about 40% of all trading volume comes from a group of 50,000 "semi-professional" traders who use the major online brokerage firms. The analysis was for the year 2003.

So a good guess would be 40%.

DIY?

Online trading has lowered commissions to the point where they are no longer the primary consideration. Ditto for good execution, if indeed they are Direct Access. If you decide later to trade commodities, options, futures, or currencies, TerraNova may be the only one that you can trade everything, real time, online, direct access. A lot of online brokerages claim to give you direct access, but if they take more than a second to execute your trade, it aint direct.

What you probably should be concentrating on is the best trading software or trading platform. But even then, everyone's criteria are different.

Find the articles online that have evaluated and compared online brokerages. I found a good one online in Barron's, but you'll find others in the trading magazines. Active Trader, Futures Mag, etc.

This is worth putting a little time and effort into, because it's a pain to switch, so once you choose, you're kinda stuck with it.

Townsend Electronics, the Parent company of TerraNova, is the one that digitized and electronified the Nasdaq. They are technological industry leaders and have a powerful and well built trading system.

I use RealTick at TerraNovaOnline, but it costs $275/mo. I think the Investor package is free to use, and just uses one screen.

What you should try is a free trial of their Investor platform, which is free. Their rates are good also, but of course, it depends on how often you trade. It will take you months to learn all the bells and whistles of what this program can do.

The other top-of-the line program is TradeStation, but it costs big bucks to join and operate. Some people consider it the Cadillac of trading and technical analysis.

TerraNova is the home of the Day Trader, so they think nothing of you making several hundred trades a day. You don't have to do that, but it's okay here if you do.