If I may, I have a few words to say in regards to my experience...

If I may, I have a few words to say in regards to my experience in trading full time as my only source of income.

For me at the time, it was either sink or swim. I had very little choice.
It was only in October last year that I even began to dabble in the stock market (thank god that I did).  

Practically a week after I had made my first "investments", one thing led to another and I quickly found my life completely uprooted. Forced to move pretty far from where I lived, I in-turn could not maintain my little part time job that sustained me. I was unable to find work and unwilling to go on benefits because the rent was more than what they paid anyways so I didn't bother.

So I looked to the market and I haven't looked back. OK.. well maybe a little..
The stock market quickly became my life and in my first week or so I made some really big newbie mistakes (Didn't diversify, chased runners, etc. practically gambling really).

Luckily(?), my first investment went really well. I had put the majority of my savings into BAL, reading one night (3am after games, as you do) that China was to end the one child policy. I spent the rest of the morning learning how to even buy shares on the stock market and bought in at $7.90. I happened to sell on the Tuesday before new-years for $15 as that was my target (set long after I bought it). Hows that for luck? I had I think 70% of all of my cash in it.

In the meantime, I quickly learned the bare basics whilst looking for, what I now know are called, swing trades. Again, I made money on most of these but many of them looking back were so close to sinking me its terrifying. One of these was with TFL, which I had come across whilst looking further into BAL. Again, dumb luck that I sold on the spike, as I was still a hopeful ignorant thinking nothing could go wrong with any of my "investments" and so I never really thought about the short trade. It's not like I was being reckless on purpose, on the contrary, I was trying to act as if I were walking on eggshells. Overthinking everything being as careful as I could, spending every day researching and learning, but still not really knowing what I was doing.

The gains that I made, thankfully paid for both my living expenses and the very expensive tuition fees for what I would learn the hard way. A few things would be; use a stoploss, be patient, don't chase runners and buy at the top, set price targets, timing, etc. All that good stuff. I now have my own style of trading/investing and it's really a mix of everything. Longs on those that I like, day-trade the movers if I can catch them, medium/short term on "hot" sector stocks, like lithium for instance.

I live by myself, the rent is cheap and I am very frugal so thankfully I can keep my overheads to about 300 or so a week. This helps to make the pressure of having to earn enough to live on and grow with not absolutely crushing. I still spend well over 70 hours a week doing trading related activities and that will not change for the foreseeable future, as the amount left I have to learn is still greater than ∞ and the amount of money I have is nearly > ∞ from being satisfactory. When it comes to educating myself, I find that FA is easy for me, it's the TA that requires the most effort to learn (hence the technical part I suppose). Of course, no matter how much you learn from books, nothing beats experience.

In my short time trading I have both made and lost, what I would have thought to be inordinate amounts of money. You can say what what you like about Hotcopper. Sure, there are many that post for a less savory or sinister purpose. But you cannot deny that there are a great many, damn good people here too that are more than willing and kind enough to take the time to share with complete strangers on the internet. I may not post a whole lot, but believe me when I say that I am most certainly watching and really appreciate everything you all do on the threads here at HC.

I hope that one-day I am confident enough in my own skills to help contribute meaningfully to these threads and be able to guide help others as many of you do now.

TLDR; If you can help it, don't do it. The hours are long, the pressure is real. And I wholeheartedly agree you really need a minimum of 100k to start with. I started with 13k and was very fortunate. Don't start with 13k for gods sake.
And last but not least, a big Thank you to all those that contribute here on Hotcopper.