I really just want to wish you good luck in your endeavours. And thank you for asking the question on here as reading the replies I found some decent hints myself. In particular I think rions comments were valuable.
However I would suggest not to paper trade if your 10k is money which if lost does not hurt you or affect your livelihood or lifestyle. I assume if you can add 1.5k per week that this would be the case.
If you wish to day trade you really need to be able to watch the screens all the time. If you can only have see occassional glance better buy less volatile stocks. Find out which trading platform you want to use. For daytrading you need something like webiress or E*Trade Pro. I use the latter as well as Power E*Trades and even though I have had a few runins with E*Trade I can recommend them.
Read the news as they come through the ASX and then watch how they can affect the market action. Create a watchlist; it is something I check every morning to see if those stocks have any news as well as looking if their bids/offers have red or green figures.
Don't get fooled by posters who tell you to put shares they steered you into to put them in the bottom drawer - it just ties up your capital.
Whenever I see a stock of interest I check what their market capital is and look at their daily chart. If I find there are spikes I treat them wearily. By the same token it does raise the prospect of a new spike being created. This would then be a share that I would not invest in but try to trade.
Another thing I always check is - are there any options, what price, what expiry. The little things amplify your result whether it is bad or good. Unless you understand them it is best to stay away from them.
And as mentioned by chook; work out whether you want to be a trader or investor in the eyes of the ATO. Advantage of the investor is a discounted capital gains tax on stocks held over 12 months. Advantage of the trader is of course the availability to claim losses against your other income.
However if you're trading all stocks without holding any for more than twelve month and have no losses it makes little difference unless you paid some ungodly fee for "training courses". AND keep good books, that will help you if the ATO audits you and keep the fees of the accountant down.
