Now that we’ve gone through all the major categories of all the expenses I spend to day trade, each month., We have a grand total of… Day trading is a business, not a hobby. And just like any business. It takes a lot of capital, investment and operating expenses. In order to make more profits, I see many beginner day traders online, trying to avoid commissions or paying for premium subscriptions., But if you’re running a business and trying to scale up you can’t be cheaping out and trying to cut corners.

This is especially true in Day Trading., Once you’ve figured out a few trading set ups and strategies that work well. It’s time to invest more money into this business to make more profits. In this video, I want to break down exactly how much money I spend for Day trading in all of these different categories, such as trading platforms, tools, commissions, locate fees and many many more. I use many of these tools to scan for stocks to trade, analyze, stock structure, research, fundamentals and execute these ideas the fastest way possible, and, of course, they also help me to smash the like button, because that is the surest way to double.

Your trading account. Every single day, So let’s start with the first category market data & trading platform fees.. I get this question a lot on all of my YouTube. Videos., Which day trading platform do you use and which one is the fastest and best for day trading.

My answer to that… hands down DAS Trader pro., A very common misconception. Many new traders have is thinking DAS trader pro is a broker. And it’s not. Das Trader is a direct access market data provider that allows traders to execute orders on various platforms And the reason many professional traders choose to execute their trades on DAS platform.

Instead of the default from their brokers is, of course, the low latency order fills and reliability of their platform. That's why I use DAS trader pro and have it connected with various brokers and pay for multiple subscriptions per month.. Personally, I use three separate DAS Trader pro Elite subscriptions, one of each connection to my three brokers: Interactive brokers, cobra trading and centerpoint securities.. However, if you trade enough order volume, some brokers will waive the platform fee so essentially get a free $ 175 credit each month and some broker will even give you additional discounts on commissions and locate.

Fees. I’ll talk more about this later in the video, so stay tuned. That’S why my platform fees at Cobra trading is actually $ 0 dollars.. I also have a Replay add-on for additional $ 15 per month..

The total cost. For my day, trading data & platform fees comes out to $ 365 per month. And we are just warming up and getting started with the day trading, spendings here.. Next up let’s look at our day trading research platforms such as scanners, newswire and SEC Filings research.

The top stock scanner I've been using for many years now, and it is trade ideas. This is the technical scanner I use every single morning, premarket to scan for gappers, whether it’s, small caps, large caps or even the overnight gap downs. I also use the stock detail. Analysis tool on Trade Ideas to really quickly analyze the stock’s float market, cap and short interest..

This is an extremely useful tool for me to do some really quick analysis on the fly when the scanner picks up a low float, runner So it’s, definitely a very essential tool to my trade planning, every single morning.. I have a video tutorial on how I set up this scanner on my YouTube channel. If you want to check that out., I use trade ideas, standard subscription., The monthly cost would be $ 118, a month., But I pay for an annual subscription since I used everyday for $ 1068 and got it with a 15 % off discount. So the cost is $ 908 per year.

That would be $ 76 per month. The next research tool is for news.. I personally use Benzinga pro. Benzinga pro is essentially a newswire service, but it also has some technical scanner components to it in the movers feature, But I go to Benzinga to do my fundamental and news research..

I want to know why the stock is up in the first place. Is it because they had FDA approval? Was it phase 1 or phase 2 trial, or was it because of earnings and guidance, And if it is earnings, what are the numbers like for earnings per sure, revenue, growth, etc. All of these are important headlines that we, as traders need to know before we buy Or sell a stock, Another extremely useful feature on Benzinga is the squawk box. In which you can listen live to Benzinga Charlie aka, my husband..

Yes, that’s right. Benzinga Charlie, is my one true love the source of my happiness, which I pay for $ 950. A year. See money can buy you happiness., Okay, sorry, I got a bit carried away..

The Squawk box feature is useful because you can hear Benzinga Charlie, say out loud. The real-time news alerts. Sometimes on squawk when Benzinga Charlie, goes on break you’ll, hear this other guy say other things…. Then I just tune out..

I dont know his name, let’s call him bagholder mike.. I think I like charlie, more though, but I might be biased. The regular cost for Benzinga Pro is $ 177 per month. However, just like trade ideas I’ve been on the annual plan for years..

The annual cost is now $ 1400.. However, I’m on the grandfathered plan of around $ 900 per year before they raised their prices. And that’s also after a 25 % discount with a code I used when I first purchased many years ago.. Therefore, I spend about $ 75 per month on Benzinga pro., By the way, if you are interested in trying any of the tools that I talk about in this video, such as Das trader pro trade ideas and Benzinga, pro I’ll put links to some free trials and 15 to 25 % off discounts codes in the description below.

Again, I would only recommend tools I personally use and like for day trading. And I’ve personally been using and paying for all of these tools for many many years now.. The next news platform I use is Briefing.. This is also a premium service for news and fundamental research for trading..

I mostly only use briefing for reading large-cap stock earnings reports and the details of the conference calls., Whether the company made any comments on guidance and future outlooks or any major fundamental changes that would move the price of the stock short term for day trading. There’s. Only monthly plan for Briefing., So I pay the monthly plan of $ 89 per month.. The last of the research tools I use is called FlashSEC..

I’Ve tried out many premium websites for SEC filings research over the years, and this one is definitely my favorite.. I pay a monthly subscription for $ 44, a month., Alright let’s move on to perhaps the most exciting day trading expense, category broker fees such as trading commissions and short locate. Fees. Now, I’m sure many of you viewers must be wondering., Omg, humbled trader.

Why are you still paying for broker commission You can trade for free at so many $ 0 commission broker apps now on your iphone. Sigh., I think for beginner traders starting out it’s totally fine to play around trading on these free commission brokers like Robinhood Webull and Many others., But if you one day, want to start taking trading seriously as a full-time career… using premium trading brokers on the desktop that require you to pay commissions is 100 % worth it.. My stance is, I don’t want to save pennies on commissions and lose dollars in profits. Plus.

All of these fees, including the subscription tools I mentioned earlier, are tax write-offs for day trading income., Since they are all business expenses. I trade with three different brokers. On interactive brokers and CenterPoint it’s, very simple for me to find the total cost of commissions and other fees each month., However, it’s nearly impossible to do so on Cobra Trading.. If you guys recall a video, I did revealing my broker statements.

I literally had to scroll down the PDF statement line by line.. There is no automatic calculation of pnl commission costs and locate costs per month, nor per year., And no data export either. Since I’m making this video during the holiday season. Instead of spending the next three hours, adding all the numbers through hundreds of pages of toilet paper, line by line, I would really much rather go get drunk from mulled wine, spiked eggnog and bury my face in chocolates and good food..

So my solution to that is I’m simply going to find the broker fees from the highest trading volume month and the lowest volume trading month and find the average number there in the middle.. So the numbers are not going to be 100 % accurate. But I’m doing my best here, This video is for your information only.. All the figures are, of course, dependent on your trading volume, whether can get rebates from routes or whether you are long or short, biased and, of course, depend on which brokers you are using to day.

Trade. With that said, on average a rough estimate, like I said earlier, I spend around $ 3500 on commissions and $ 2500 on short locate fees.. To be honest, this is not bad at all, especially when it comes to the short locate fees. This year.

I’M very conscious of which stocks I locate short. And after switching my primary shorting broker from CenterPoint to Cobra trading, I’m saving more than 25 % on short locate fees.. They also provide many of the stocks to short free of charge and lots of commission discounts. After you, trade, a certain volume per month., If you have capital of more than $ 30K, I would highly recommend using Cobra trading.

Now that we’ve gone through all the major categories of all the expenses I spend each month. In order to day trade., We have a grand total of $ 6649 of costs per month, which would be $ 79,788 US dollars a year. Remember traders day trading is a business, and if you want to take this business seriously, you need to spend money investing in The business and to scale-up., Rather than spending $ 10 to make $ 100. I would much rather spend more $ 100 to make $ 1000.

And it’s the same concept in day trading.. That being said, all that 79k of expenses can be used as tax deductions. Against my day trading profits., So if I made $ 400K of profit this year, I can deduct those expenses against my income., So only $ 321K of that income is taxable.. With this example, not taking into account the currency exchange in British Columbia, Canada, where I live., I could be saving over 2.75 % average tax rate or $ 42K.

I’m, not a CPA, but I would be happy to go over some best practices to save on taxes. Legally, as a day trader in a future video., So if you are interested in learning more about day trading income taxes for the US or Canada, let me know down below in the comment section and make sure to subscribe, to see more.. Thank you guys for watching. As always, I will se you next time,.