[joop]

I trade index futures intraday full-time. Don't think this is the path to easy money, it will probably be one of the toughest jobs you've ever done. As a broad answer to your +ev question, the answer would be no. For the majority of people daytrading it's -ev. However, for those that can do it well, they can make good money... and with the power of compounding, they can make an amazing amount of money over the long term.

You could start trading futures with as little as $5,000, though $10,000 would a safer amount; with that you could trade one contract. A good goal would be to take $100 per contract per day from the market, if you can do this without pulling money out of your account it won't be long 'till you're trading 5 contracts. A good trader could take $250 per day per contract.

The best way to learn to trade is sitting in with a succesful trader and having them teach you how it's done. This will still take several months, but it's by far the fastest way to learn. Unfortunately there aren't many people that are willing to do this and the ones that do charge an awful lot. The other way is to buy several books on the subject and start researching. Expect to spend 6-12 months learning and developing your own trading system. Then another 3-6 months trading it live on a simulator until you're comfortable trading your real money account.

Hope this helps, feel free to ask if you have anymore questions.

PS. Be aware that you may spend years developing a system and trading it and still not turn a profit, you may lose all your money, this is very common. What I have mentioned above is pretty much the best case scenario.