If your cash balance is over $25,000, you get unlimited day trades. If you make lots of money day trading stocks and you trade with a margin account, you will have to start making estimated tax payments four times a year since your income from trading is not subjected to tax withholding like your income from your full time job. If you trade with a Roth IRA account, you won't be taxed. I made $1213 in under an hour last Thursday (4/24/2014) with my margin account. That doesn't happen every day. Ha ha. Generally, people don't show you their strategy unless you pay them lots of money first.

Your chances of making money (without insider information) are very, very small. The lottery may offer you better odds, but ego prevents many day traders from admitting it.

The profits from your winners are reduced by the cost of transactions, income taxes and your mistakes (you will buy stocks that go down (or even disappear).

day traders in general hold a stock for less then 10 minutes-95% of them lose money-the only way to go is with mutal funds-please read john bogle[on mutal funds] and also [a random walk down wall st] put 90% of your money in mutal funds and with the other 10% play the market long-chanhes are you will lose money-I been a investor since 1962 and it took me until 1985 to fine this out-good luck day tradeing or flipiing -no difference-but it's hell at income tax time

I recently started trading this year, and for the most part have only invested in companies that I plan on keeping for a while. I understand the differences between short-term and long-term positions and how they are taxed ( for the most part anyway), but my question is how is day trading different from flipping?

I would really like to get more involved and start trading more often for the short term, in order to try and make money now instead of holding out for the longer plays. I don't want to buy off margin, I simply want to buy a stock I see a potential uptrend in and then sell it when I feel like it's gotten hot enough for me to make some money on. I've read that you are listed as a day trader when you buy and sell the same stock 3 times within one day, for 3 days within a rolling 5 day period. Would this be an accurate definition or would a closer definition be anyone who buys and sells any stock 3 or more times in a 5 day period?

Also, what would be the best strategy for short-term trading as far as taxes are concerned? is there a rule of thumb most people follow as far as how much you should make on any given stock before you sell ( such as only pulling out when you are up a 100% or more so you have more money in profit then you do taxes?).

Right now I have a full time job, and this would only be a hobby with some of my extra cash, so I'm just seeing if this is worth my time from a tax perspective, or if I should just stick to long positions