Many traders find their way to the firms after trying to trade actively through their online brokerage accounts but finding they need a way to trade even faster and more cheaply. The added costs of doing business through a day-trading firm start to pay for themselves if your strategy requires making dozens or even hundreds of trades a day. The Securities and Exchange Commission counts roughly three hundred day-trading offices around the country that together serve thousands of clients. These new firms crow that cheap computers and the Internet give the rest of us the same kind of technology and intelligence that the big boys have. They make big market plays easy by lending you up to ten times the amount of money in your account and by charging extremely low commissions.
Some firms are more or less reputable.
Others come on like pimps at a bus station. All the stuff I'd need to trade. As a day trader, you can work at a home computer in your pajamas. For more camaraderie, you can plant yourself in one of the big rooms the firms fill with brand-new computers. There you can schmooze with other guys who, like you, are their own bosses, betting their life's savings on a big score.