10k to 1mil in one yr

hello

10k to 1.2mil in 52 weeks of trading using a mini account…it takes 20 pips a day, 5 days a week
your probably doing the math and coming up with $52k

so its week 1 and u nervously put 10k into your forex account…starting with 10mini lots…u make your 20 pips a day…that Friday u should have 11k…
week 2 comes around…u start trading with 11 mini lots…that Friday comes around and u should have 12,100…now week 3 comes around and u start trading with 12mini lots. that Friday u should have 13,310…and the cycle goes on…

i so far explained the first 3 weeks…now let skip ahead to week15 which is roughly about 3-4 months

week 15 u should be at $37,967…so how many mini lots will u be trading that week? 37 mini lots. now week 16 is here, there is 41,763 in Ur account and u start trading with 41mini lots.then at the start of week 17, theres should be $45,939…if u continue this cycle till week 52…there will be 1,290,870 in the account…yes 1000%

caution…every trade will take up 10% of your account if using 100:1…or 5% if using 200:1…i personally will go with 200:1 because I’m not planning to have more that 2 positions open at any given time

there is a faster way of reaching that amount using the same concept…instead of changing the amount of lots u trade on every monday…change your lot sizes every $1000 mark u pass up

I’m sorry if my examples suck…this is the 2nd time I’m attempting to post this tread…1st attempt was very detailed but someone exited the browser

so if anyone has comments or questions, don’t matter if its smartass questions/comments or honest…please post

ps. i guess i left this out for the ppl that havent caught on…however many thousand dollars there is, that is the number of mini lots u open positions with…lets say u have 56,700 in the account…thatll be 55mini lots…lets say u have 750,872 in the account…that be 750 mini lots

Hi,

The idea of making 20 pips per day and compounding your money sounds deceptively simple. It might lead new traders into thinking that their profit targets for each of their trades should be 20 pips. (Actually 20 pips plus the spread.) From a Risk:Reward ratio, this type of thinking can be detrimental to your trading account.

Why?

Let’s say that for every 25 pips you want to make, you are willing to risk 25 pips. You have a 1:1 risk:reward ratio. Now, since we all have losses, let’s say that on your first trade you lose 25 pips. In order to realize a net 25 pips from where you started, you need each of your next two trades to net you 25 pips for a total of 50 pips. If you make only 1 trade per day, 3 days of you first week has elapsed. With only two days left there is no way that you will make the 100 pips per week following this trading plan.

However, if you change your risk:reward ratio from 1:1 to some higher ratio, let’s say 1:5, then for every 25 pips you are willing to risk you will make 125 pips as a reward. Can you see the difference. If your first trade was a loss and you lost 25 pips, you have the same loss as the above example. If your next trade was a winner, and you made 125 pips, you are up 100 pips net and have made your weekly goal. As a matter of fact, you would no longer be tied to your computer for the rest of the week.

Compounding is great, but it has to be seasoned with the realities of trading.
:slight_smile:

Hi there,

I totally understand what you’re saying and that is exactly what my money management strategy will be trying to accomplish. However, the only minor detail in all that is getting the 20 pips per day consistently which is not as easy as it seems it should be. :eek:

Why? Well from what I’ve experienced just in demo there’s a lot of little psychologies going on in ones mind that need to be addressed first.

Even when you think an entry setup with it’s confirmation is perfect, it can still go against. So then you try again but this time it’s got a double motivation…make up the pips you lost and make the 20 pips you need…and that emotional factor seems to work against.

Then there’s the “WOW…that win was great and I liked the feeling so let’s do it again today instead of tomorrow”…and for some reason it goes against so then we gotta try and make it up or feel lousy until tomorrow.

Then there’s the “I missed yesterday cause I was busy with life so I need to do 2 today” and, well, maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t.

Not to mention there’s the “I’m not sure this trade is going to reach 20 pips but it’s at 10 so let’s exit with some profit”. Or “this looks like it could go more so let’s wait” and then it reverses on you totally.

Finally there’s the stoploss factor which says “the setup is perfect but maybe I need to give it just a little more room” and you blow your risk management.

There are more but that’s a few. :frowning:

What is working now is just to take it trade by trade, accept that there will be some losses, and not count the pip quota one needs per day, week etc. However, when my balance does reach those 1K milestones, then I do increase the lot size and I believe it will work out the same but in it’s own good time. :slight_smile:

Hey there,

I was doing similar calculations yesterday, but I came up with something like this:

Start off with 10,000, make 10% per month. This seems more reasonable to me.

After 1 year you’ll have $28,531.17
2 years - $89,543.02
3 years - $281,024.37
4 years - $881,974.85
5 years - $2,768,014.90

And so on. $100 million before you’re halfway through year 8.
(Personally I’d split after my first few million, but hey.)

Of course the main problems are:

  • You need consistent results over time for this to occur
  • You are always reinvesting all of the money that you make and have 100% of your investment at risk.
  • Not taking margin into consideration at all.

You could also be really pessimistic. Say you only expect to make a 1% return per month (12% per year, that’s about what the stock market does)… suddenly instead of 5 years to make your first million, it will take you 58 years :eek:. Bit of a difference

yall are right…but i wasnt telling yall how to make ur 20pips a day…

i may sound a bit crazy…but i think 20 pips is the easiest when ur only going for 5-10, maybe 20 on pairs like the gpyjpy using the 1hr charts…especially when u wait for the right candle…[B]which throws risk/ratio out the window[/B] dont have to explain why…and i like to go for 30pips using dailys…and I DO NOT USE STOP LOSS…STOP LOSS IS MAKE LOSS be confident about ur ****…but thats just me…ur wondering ‘‘this guy is going to have -100pips when he was only going for 20’’…come back the next day , positon doesnt look as appetizing, close it a take ur losses…52 weeks was jus an example…but then who cares

i read somewhere that says im not taking margin into consideration? elaborate cuz there is no way u can get margin called with one to 2 positions open when its5-10% of ur account…unless i die and nobody closes a bad position for me…but then who cares

and somewhere else i read something about bad days…remember this was all a big example…it may take alittle more time than exactly 52 weeks…and the key to this concept is to [B][I][U]WALK AWAY AND DONT COME BACK TILL THE NEXT DAY[/U][/I][/B]…but then who cares

Statistically, what is the difference if you notice a lot of great trends in a day and make 7 times more trades per day than usual, and make 140 pips in a day? I mean, as long as you aren’t getting fatigued and making bad descisions, and as long as you are waiting for your current trades to close and keeping the same margin ratio, if the system just applies the same ideas to the same charts over and over, you should theoretically be able to go nonstop and speed up the process so that you make $1 million in far less than a year, if you really work your *** off.

Unless I’m misunderstanding, and the point of walking away is to just set your “take profit” and “stop loss” and then let it do it’s thing, to keep emotion out of the picture.

Good luck.

The problem with your strategy is simple. Its possible to lose 10, 15, 20 trades in a row. Its called tail risk. (normal curve)

Lets say week 10, you lose 20 trades in a row. Your account is now down 15 to 20%. Now you have to make up 30% or more to break even (back to week 10).

I’m not saying its not possible, but it will be very difficult.

That is assuming that your trades are normally distributed. Even so, you’d have to be SO unlucky to hit 20 bad trades in a row… like 3 standard deviations or more from the norm.

Example: Flipping a coin 20 times and having it land tails 20 times, the probability is 1.2^20, or 0.00000095367431640625%

I realize that forex trading is not binomially distributed… I don’t know how it is, if at all.

“If if if”. It’s possible to do everything perfectly right and hit 50 or even 100 losing trades in a row. The chances may be a million to 1, but it’s still there. It’s equally as possible to win 20 trades as lose 20 trades, if all you are considering is chance and not the trading system itself.

The whole point of the normal distribution is that over time, your system should expect to perform as expected ______ amount of the time. Yes, you will have anomolies where sometimes you will win more than expected in a day or week, other times you will lose more than expected. But unless a statistical miracle occurs, you don’t really have to worry about making 20 bad trades in a row.

But I’m no statistical expert so I could be wrong on this.

It’s a good idea to keep a higher bankroll than you expect to need, maybe twice or three times as much, but having 20x seems quite excessive.

…I’m in no way claiming that making an average of 20 pips a day for 365 days in a row is any easier though.

FX trading is not random as your coin flip (or should not be just luck that you win and lose - Hopefully you have a better strategy), but that still doesn’t mean your win and loses will not follow a normal distribution curve. Look at your trades over time. Go back back 200 to 300 trades and tell me it does not follow (very closly) to to normally distributed bell curve.

In the history of my trading, I’ve had 19 winners in a row and 14 losses in a row. 19 and 14 are on the tail end (3 std). I have had only one occurrence of this, but I’ve had several 7,8,9 and 10 losses / wins in row.

According to your math (0.00000095367431640625%), my 19 in a row doesn’t statistically have a chance.

Remember, I didn’t say your strategy didn’t have a chance, i"m just saying its going to be very hard. I hope you losses come at the beginning and not the end.

Right now my record shows to be on a winning strategy like that to produce those results. Do I expect it to play out in the end… hell no! I think traders are more math and science guys (and gals). We look at short term numbers and predict a long term result by keeping with the same consistent level of performance. In the real world of trading, it just won’t work out because of to many unforeseen variables that throw a wrench in the system. Oh well, big profit or little profit, being in the black at the end of the year is all I care about.

I dont understand here, are you saying you are going to attempt this, or are you just throwing out some math to get some new people excited about large numbers? In either case, you don’t need the foreign exchange to punch numbers into a calculator and come up with magical profits on spreadsheets.

First of all, I think the majority of the people responding to this thread will never make any large amount of money in the FX market. Why? Because they have too many preconceived notions about failing. If your mindset is so hung up on “risk” and “loss” then guess what, you will lose most of your trades over time. We are all aware of the market realities, and it’s not secret that nobody wins 100% of the time.

If you develop a trading system or follow a system created by someone else, you’ll be able to quantify your overall profits or losses. To make 20 pips in profit per day is not difficult, considering the market fluctuates AT LEAST that much on many major pairs daily.

The idea presented by the OP is feasible…and while hitting $1.2 million in 1 year is certainly ambitious, it is far from impossible. To add to that, if you are aiming for $1.2 million, you may end up making $800K…but hey, to turn $10K into $800K in a year is not too shabby.

I don’t think n00bs should think that making money is easy in the FX market or otherwise, but at the same time, don’t discourage people from setting ambitious goals simply because you are too afraid to do so for yourself.

Setting up any new trader with an UNREALISTIC goal, which 10k–>1.2million most certainly is, will not only surely bust their account, but it’ll leave them bitter about the market, and likely unwilling to pursue it any further. So what glory is there in blinding a new trader with flashy profits, when you could essentially be robbing them of the opportunity to participate in a market they could’ve otherwise profited from.

The problem with compounding your gains isn’t the difficulty in making the pips in a day, or even a week, but it is the drawdowns that occur, as your risk is increasing exponentially along with your rewards. And I’m sure you know that large drawdowns can kill you, because the hole you dig is a lot more difficult to climb out of percentage wise.

Try throwing in a few losses in your compounding spreadsheets and you’ll notice an extreme drop in your end balance with just a few added losses. The impressive part isn’t the numbers, it’s the consistency inherent in such an idea, and it requires near trading perfection to get those astronomical gains.

Also, your disregard for the term “risk” and your method of concluding profits from volatility leaves me to believe that you have either never traded a live account, or have not been doing so for very long. Good luck to you, really.

No disrespect but I, for one, hope you’re wrong :wink:

If one is consistently getting a 2:1 reward/risk, with a 100:1 ratio, and only a 50% win ratio, they could still make quite a nice profit…getting to 1mil in one year?..not with 10K, but maybe in 3 years.

As long as one manages to keep the “discipline” it takes…which in this forum seems well emphasized…then I think it is quite realistic.

I think the “new” traders you reference are those that are blindly looking for those hundreds pips trades with huge lot sizes and leverage to get them there in a flash, which utimately leads to the worst case scenario you describe. And I don’t think you’ll find many of those traders here…yet :wink:

In reality all one needs is a well managed plan (trading plan & money management), and putting the money management goals in a spreadsheet that helps keep that in perspective is what every good business plan has.

Anyways, to put my money where my mouth is once I go live which I’m planning to soon, I’ll put my plan to the test & will post my results.

Good pips to you :slight_smile:

I will never be a millionare.

I use my profits for living expenses and living comfortably. This is a nice way to live.

Stacking up your money is also fraught with uncertainty. You could be dead tomorrow. :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

Unrealistic for you, ambitious for another. Really, it’s a matter of semantics and personality…but I’ll play along with your choice of words. As unrealistic as that goal may be, you have ZERO chance of making over 1 million dollars if you never try.

Second, a new trader who does not take the time to get a proper understanding of how the market works will have a tough time turning a profit regardless of what his/her goals are. That much is obvious, and who are you to make assumptions that all traders reading this thread are new? The bottom line is that the proposition the OP made is possible.

The problem with compounding your gains isn’t the difficulty in making the pips in a day, or even a week, but it is the drawdowns that occur, as your risk is increasing exponentially along with your rewards. And I’m sure you know that large drawdowns can kill you, because the hole you dig is a lot more difficult to climb out of percentage wise.

You mean you wouldn’t reinvest any gains you make? If you start with $10K and make $2K in profit over a week, then you start investing with an account equity of $12K. You can choose what percentage of your account to risk on a trade, and as long as you do not increase that percentage, your effective “risk” stays the same. What’s your point?

Try throwing in a few losses in your compounding spreadsheets and you’ll notice an extreme drop in your end balance with just a few added losses. The impressive part isn’t the numbers, it’s the consistency inherent in such an idea, and it requires near trading perfection to get those astronomical gains.

No, it doesn’t require “near perfect” trading. AT most, losses would only increase the time it takes to reach the goal…and to make 20 pips per day in profit, that can be done with relatively high consistency. I routinely make at least that many pips in a few hours of trading.

Also, your disregard for the term “risk” and your method of concluding profits from volatility leaves me to believe that you have either never traded a live account, or have not been doing so for very long. Good luck to you, really.

You just love making assumptions don’t you? Well, I’ll leave you to your trading which I am sure is approaching the hundred dollar mark at any moment now. Why don’t you develop the: “Coward’s FX Trading System: Zero Risk and up to Zero Pips Per Day - Hey, you might not get rich but at least you won’t lose any money!”

I know you are new to this forum with only 7 posts.

As an experienced poster, I can tell you that this is a high quality forum and people are allowed to express their differing points of view on subjects as long as they do so politely.

Unfortunately, your last comment quoted here is in very bad taste and I, for one, certainly do not appreciate it. :mad:

As a newbie here, I would ask you to learn quickly, like right now, to be considerably more diplomatic with your replies so that quotes like the above do not continue in your posts.

You will then be welcome on this forum and able to get away with much. :stuck_out_tongue:

Hint - make regular use of the smiles box provided. They provide a good substitute for comments otherwise distasteful. Also make good use of humour if possible.

[B]Eric , Try to Pass Smile Like PipHacker:) :slight_smile:
PipHacker!!!:smiley: :smiley: [/B]

I’m all for large ambitions and dreaming big - but - I wanted to throw in the following idea concerning money management, which I honestly think has alot of validity:

[I]The 2 percent rule is a basic tenet of money management. Even if the odds are stacked in your favor, it is inadvisable to risk a large portion of your capital on a single trade. The 2% rule states that you should never risk more than 2% of your account equity on a single trade. In the words of Market Wizard Larry Hite: �Never risk more than 1% of total equity on any trade. By only risking 1%, I am indifferent to any individual trade.�[/I]

Regularly risking say 10% of your equity on any one trade is an overly dangerous undertaking IMO -

Presuming one has a profitable trading system and not living off it, I think the next biggest challenge in making it to 1 mil is getting over the “self-sabotaging” mentality that, for some reason buried deep in our psychy, says we don’t deserve it (heard it in a Zig Ziglar or Denis Waitley speal some time back). One reason why the 2 or 5% of us making it in this game are probably the ones that figured out how to get past that hurdle. The rest of us have to learn accept the new levels of financial gain as we reach them.

After making my 1K to 1mil spreadsheet :rolleyes: I was looking at what 2% looked like at those higher levels and I can see how it could play with your mind. Here’s what I mean (you could equate Trade# to Day# if you wish):


at the 10K level:
Trade#  result    Balance    Profit/(Loss)     Pips     Lots
102	Lose	 $9,187.19    $(187.49) 	(21)	0.9
103	Lose	 $9,003.45    $(183.74) 	(20)	0.9
104	Win	 $9,363.58      $360.14 	40 	0.9
105	Win	 $9,738.13      $374.54 	37 	1
106	Win	 $10,127.65      $389.53 	39	1

same strategy but now reached the 100K level:

Trade#  result       Balance   Profit/(Loss)   Pips    Lots
190	Win	 $99,445.66    $3,824.83 	 39 	9
191	Win	 $103,423.48  $3,977.83 	 39 	10
192	Lose	 $101,355.01  $(2,068.47)	 (20)	10
193	Win	 $105,409.21  $4,054.20 	 39 	10
194	Lose	 $103,301.03  $(2,108.18)	 (20)	10
195	Lose	 $101,235.01  $(2,066.02)	 (20)	10

Ok, how about when reaching the 500K level:

Trade#  result       Balance   Profit/(Loss)  Pips    Lots
263	Win	 $530,730.82  $20,412.72 	 38 	53
264	Win	 $551,960.06  $21,229.23 	 38 	55
265	Lose	 $540,920.85  $(11,039.20)	 (20)	54
266	Lose	 $530,102.44  $(10,818.42)	 (20)	53
267	Win	 $551,306.53  $21,204.10 	 38 	55

You can see, the amount of loss per trade of approx $200 at the 10K level is within our normal financial comfort zone for many?, but compared to the 100K level, the loss per trade of $2000 starts to get a little uncomfortable…then at the 500K level we’re losing $10,000 per trade :eek: …now it’s really uncomfortable because that’s way out of our comfort zone of what we’re used to playing with …and we choke so to speak, even though nothing else has changed…still the same trading strategy getting just 20-40 pips at a 2:1 reward/risk ratio.

Want to know what it looks like at 1mil?..well imagine the 500K level, only doubled…no big deal eh? :smiley:

So if I may go so far as to say, the trick is to know what your level is and when you are the there, learn to deal with it. Maybe you’ve blown an account or two before…so what amount did you reach before you blew it? That would be your level. If it was your first and it took a nose dive right away, then maybe you started out too high to begin with.

Food for thought anyways. Happy trades ahead :slight_smile: