you re doing fine so far, but you will not be ready to trade real money for a few months at a minimum. you need to keep paper trading. be sure to take into account all of your trading costs. you need to know exactly what conditions you will enter and exit the market. how much will you trade each day? i recommend 4-5 hours. you must master the psychological aspects of trading. for example, what will you do if you have a stretch of losing trades. it is a certainty that you will have a losing streak. you would probably need to quit trading for a while, go back to the simulator, and if you continue to have problems modify your entry and exit strategies. you absolutely have to have good methods. anyone can get lucky for a short time but you need methods that will continue to work. you must learn to manage your money so that you can survive a series of poor trades. be sure not to overtrade.

it is all right to read about other peoples methods but in the end it will be your methods that will work or not work. do NOT rely on some one else’s trading methods.

i suggest you learn about stock index futures. leverage and costs are better as well as liquidity. day trading stocks and options are suckers games. stock index futures are not easy to learn but they are ideal for day trading.

all the information that you need is on the internet along with lots of information that you do not need. most people that fail at this do so because they are not properly prepared. and remember all the people that are giving you advise would be daytrading too if they could do it.

hope this helps

If you already have the capital to start talking about having 20,000 to invest in each stock you are way ahead of most people.

I don’t think you will have trouble moving stocks in buckets of 20,000. That is pennies when compared to the overall market.

If you want to try it, and you really have 20k to invest, start with 500 or 1000 and try it out. Do it for a couple of weeks and see how it goes. Keep in mind the days you tried it, might have just been a good couple of days for the market in general. On those days its possible that nearly the entire market did well, and you got lucky.

Also if you aren’t quite ready to use real money, join an online stock market game (simulation) and try you’re luck there. If you are able to do truly well, you might do well in the real market. Keep in mind that since its a simulation you will probably be more likely to take greater risks than you might not take with real money. Which could lead to a higher return that you might really expect.

Be sure to remember the number one rule of investing! NEVER invest money that you can not afford to lose. Meaning that if I walked up to you and stole it right out of your pocket, you would be no worse off.

Well there are several problems here. First, you have to buy at the ask price and sell at the bid price. If you are not doing this your profits will be artificially high. The second problem is that there is a lot of luck in the market. Your success could be beginner’s luck. 6 days is not enough to test a strategy.
You say you have a read one book on the subject. I will warn you there are many books on the subject that are full of crap and not any better than astrology. They can often appear impressive to beginners. The best books and articles I’ve read are the ones that warn you not to do it.
Day trading is very difficult and most people lose money. Many day traders are professionals who are good at math but end up losing money anyway.

I deal in tax returns. I’ve seen a LOT of tax returns where people jumped in and tried "day trading."

1. During 2007, they thought they were geniuses becauset he overall market was going up and they figured they couldn’t lose.

2. During 2008, they encountered the meltdown and figured it wouldn’t last or that they could successfully bet against it. Anything to keep their money in plan and have a chance of winning it back. Many lost all of their savings.

3. Several cashed out their retirement plans to live on–blissfully unaware that income from an IRA couldn’t be used to soak up the capital losses (schedule D has a limit of $3000 per year) and now owe big bucks to the government.

4. You aren’t a daytrader. A day trader is someone who is out of school and spends 4-5 hours a day trading and has no day job. The IRS still classifies you as an invester/schedule D person.

If you are going to find a good career in engineering, then don’t day trade. 95% of day traders can’t survive at the end. Although you can make some consistent profit right now, but one big mistake or disaster can wipe you out. Hence, risk control is very important. Don’t spend over 20% of your capital in one trade.

Off course, you can learn more from these articles:

Sure-win Stock Trading
http://surewinstock.blogspot.com/

How to Understand Technical Analysis in Stock trading
http://www.ehow.com/how_5153842_understand-technical-analysis-stock-trading.html

How to become an equity trader working for a Proprietary Trading Firm
http://www.ehow.com/how_5140125_become-working-proprietary-trading-firm.html

How to Become a Successful Swing Stock Trader
http://www.ehow.com/how_5137779_become-successful-swing-stock-trader.html

How to be a successful Day Trader
http://www.ehow.com/how_5137770_successful-day-trader.html

Joe hits my observation very well, if you do not understand the difference between bid and ask prices forget it for now. Bid & ask prices are a basic notion and if you do not have a proper understanding bid and ask you do not understand the charts you read and how to interpret your sandbox results.

Think of it like this. In your mind take 10 ounces of silver to a shop that engages in bullion selling. You go in and know the CME group exchange is quoting $17.00/oz for SI. Do you expect to sell your SI for $17.00/oz? Nope, dealer needs to make a profit so he discounts his BID price. Now, when he has the goods you want you expect he will not take a loss from current spot prices so you increase your ASK price from spot. The only time you have any clout in these transactions is when you are talking about buying/selling large quantities, and then your transaction may affect the market upsetting your calculations (this is why insider trading is so taboo).

Also, you need to understand and execute tactics and strategies other than buy low and sell high. You need to consider promise now, deliver later (futures and there are two variants on that — guarantee a buy price or guarantee a sell price and there are two variants on each of those — buy or sell contracts), promise now, maybe deliver later (options and there are two variants on that — guarantee a buy price or guarantee a sell price and there are two variants on each of those — buy or sell contracts), commodities(each with option & futures markets), currencies (each with option & futures markets), stocks(each with option & futures markets), bonds (not certain if there are derivative markets here, but bonds have their own unique and quirky behavior), and combination of such tactics. Note, some of those open you up unlimited liabilities. In fact, a wise day-trader can make money off of the bid-ask spread and certainly smart ones can make money in a rising, hard working ones in a falling market, and hard working geniuses can do it in a sideways market.

I do not want to scare you away from what you have in mind, just beware day-trading is not for the ignorant, and you have displayed ignorance on a very basic point.