Hi Travis,

I don't trade the news. The reason is the news is made to fit what's happening in the market and on the charts. Listen/read any news report. It'll say something like: "the Dow rallied today based on positive news from the commodity sector" or something equally as ambiguous.

No, the only sure fire way for a trader outside the pit to trade is through a chart. The chart will tell you everything you need to know about a market - where the buyers are, where the sellers are, where's it's likely to go next.

As far as account size is concerned, you should start with as much as possible. I know that doesn't help much, but you need to give yourself options and a small account doesn't do that for you. Realistically, if you're daytrading, you should have at least $5000 and $10k would be better. Theoretically you could probably start daytrading with $2500, but you couldn't be wrong too many times and continue.

Position trading pretty much demands at least $5k and that will severely limit which markets you can trade as many margins are running $2500+ per contract. There are still mini-contracts and some lower margin markets to trade; however you might have to be patient waiting for the right signal before committing.

But with the internet and global trading there really isn't any reason you couldn't "day"trade. I'm "day" trading right now, even though it is 10:30 pm (Pacific). I'm scalping couple of ticks here and there as the emini plods along.

Hope that helps a bit.

Erich