How much do average full time traders trade with?

so i have been on a demo account for about 3 months now and i was thinking that maybe eventually i will do this after college for a full time or at least part time source of income. On the demo I’m trading with 10k and bascally one pip is equal to a dollar. how much money do many full time traders use to make an above average salary ?? I’ve seen on a youtube video that a guy traded with 200k and that to me is a whole lot of money. anyone have any idea on how much successful traders trade with??
thank you

[QUOTE=“Krash11554;679319”]so i have been on a demo account for about 3 months now and i was thinking that maybe eventually i will do this after college for a full time or at least part time source of income. On the demo I’m trading with 10k and bascally one pip is equal to a dollar. how much money do many full time traders use to make an above average salary ?? I’ve seen on a youtube video that a guy traded with 200k and that to me is a whole lot of money. anyone have any idea on how much successful traders trade with?? thank you[/QUOTE] 50k is the bare minimum to consider going full time with I’d say.

wow ok. its crazy bc in just 24 hours i was up 740 pips at one time (most i ever been up at a once:D) and that only yield about 550 dollars. i can only imagine the feeling when your trading with 50k and being up that much.

I would say that when you have enough money in your account to make more money than you spend everymonth without being glued to the 5M charts 12 hours a day…then you have done something right :slight_smile:

You wouldnt have your whole 50k on one trade, probably around 2% of it for most traders

Look at this way Krash, I do some work with a broker from an educational perspective, I recently got some insight into client performance, which for me has totally debunked the idea that small accounts can’t make money. E.g. One client started in March with 10k, I checked his account he was up 112k, I gave him a call and had a 30 min chat. To be fair he made 30k from the Swiss debacle but for the most part he made some good money trading Oil and a few other commodities and some currencies, this guy was consistent. Turned out he had some system that he had got from some trading course he had attended for 3 weeks. What does that tell you?

It says, what really counts is not the Dollar amount, it is really about ability and planning. This guy has a full time job. The interesting thing it’s not just him, there are others.

The other interesting fact is, the guys that have 100k+ as starting balances are all negative, SERIOUSLY!, when you talk to them, it was quite simple, they traded fulltime but most of them came from high powered jobs, like stock broking, Engineering, IT and so on and had no real idea about trading at all or even how to put together a trade plan. One of them called me the other day and said, I am going fulltime, just but six screens, etc. Can I give him a scalping strategy, so I teamviewed, him into my terminal and traded Cable for 1 hour on a 30 min chart using a VPA plan (to be fair I was already looking at scalping cable that day), So I showed him how to analyze volume and took a buy, 4 hours later Sterling was up quite a few ticks. I know this guy is now going to start scalping with VPA after an 1 hour tutorial (That’s how it is!), in my book that is nuts… The point is these guys have spent their life amassing fortunes in other fields and now are looking for a retirement kind of job without the learning curve, the other guy did a course deposits 200k and says he wants to start a fund and start educating, I have no doubt, the balance obsessed traders will show more of an interest in guy with 200k than 10k, no limit to how he can profess success as a trader. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Don’t believe evrything you see.

So my point is you need simply cash to live, some trading capital and keep trading, in a year of constant screen time, you should turn a descent profit. It will reqeuire planning and being an employee for a few years, unless you have some Bar Mitzva cash. Good luck buddy! I just thought I’ll drop a word or two on this. All you guys who work in brokerages no what I am talking about.

ok cool well hofully i can build an account up when i go live. currently still demo. but i did just open an scottstrade account for stocks with 100dollars hahahah. i bought FXCM bc how low it dropped so i figured why not haha. live currency trading will have to wait

i started with 2,000 in my account and i make over 100 dollars a day. made 300 on Thursday. At the moment i only trade 1 mini lot per trade so starting out with 2000 the margin was never a question i could always cover. When i enter the trade i trade the 4 hour chart, i am in the trades in the morning and out of all them by night and dont have to sit in front of my computer all day. I set my take profits at 60 pips and my stop lose at 50 pips so i get better then 1 to 1 RR and can afford 50 dollar loses. each trade i win will equally 60 dollars roughly and losers 50. monthly income is 2500-3000. i haven’t been growing my account, ive been taking profits cause im comfortable with my profits and system right now but im going to start since. so with 2000 i make 2500-3000 a month. And dont listen to the people that tell you its not possible to make good money and you should shoot for low percent profit targets cause ive been doing it for a few months now and as long as you put a lot of time and research into learning new things and making sure you follow all of your rules and dont get greedy then you should alright. Best of luck to you.

Sorry to burst your bubble but you are not going to be able to consistently make over 100% return each month.

If you were to do so and keep your money in your account you would go from 2k usd to over 8m usd in 1 year which would be ridiculous.

So the presumption here is that you trade the same regardless of account size. Come on bro we all know priorities chance from a $2000 , $20 000 or $200 000 account.

Its not a matter of account size its a matter of accumulative returns.

He was stating he thought he could make 100% a month based on 2.5% risk of total capital on each trade.

I was simply stating that if he was able to do so consistently he would be able to go from 2k to 8m in 1 year.

not exactly, im pretty comfortable with the income im making right now so im not going to be bumping up my risk as my account goes up. no point if i don’t need to make any more money why trade bigger lots with greater risk. so the percent was only a 100 percent the first month i then it was 50 and so on.

This argument has gone on these forums for years among senior members and junior members and outright new traders. It is a really silly argument.

If you are a new trader it is unlikely you will make any money from trading at all without getting some help via a wrapped profitable system or some kind of mentorship (show me how you do it scenario).

If you are a seasoned trader with a few years of trading then you clearly have earned your stripes and probably have a strategy. I have no reason to be skeptical if someone says I can make 2k a month from trading…

I intend again to debunk this idea, I have seen several small accounts go from a few k to triple digits. I myself started small then ramped up later because I wanted more market exposure to different instruments. So I am not a good example as some will argue I put more cash behind it.

Others simply took this approach…

If you had e.g. a $1500 a/c (incredibly small) and risked initially 5% per trade (forget RR for a moment), that is $75 per trade, 75 ticks of risk with a 10k contract. Note this is my max risk (I can risk less).

Your risk of ruin is a 20 trade consecutive loss at max. Let me skew this further… You quit trading if you drawdown 25% that is you lose $375 in a row that is 5 trades. Let’s tighten you even further… You can only take 2 opportunities max in a day which means your max daily loss is $150, giving you 2 and half days of crap trades before you realise you are wasting your time.

I am yet to see someone lose 20 trades in a row (not saying they don’t exist), if this happens, close your account and stop trading, it is not for you. Let us now imagine you say to yourself I am looking to take opportunities that will offer me at max risk $225 at half of max risk $112. This is essentially a 3R multiple. This should deter you from using your max risk unless you spotted a move in 4H above and you are more likely to focus on 15m/30m/1h as your preferred time frames.

Let’s say Day 1 you lose both trades at half your max risk x2 = $75 (remember you have only 2 trades per day)
Day 2 you lose again (not likely for a seasoned trader) x2 half risk = $75

Day 3 you finally win 3R x2 half of max risk = $112 x 2 = $224 (Assume you are lucky)

Day 4 you win 3R and loose half risk = $112 - $37.50 = $74.50

Net for the week $148.50 profit

Day 5 You rest and don’t trade (It is Friday)

This is what most accounts tend to look like at the end of a trading week under the correct trading conditions if they are small. I will leave you to calculate win loss ratio, etc. Assuming these results are generated from a trade plan then, they should be consistent, your account should gain on average $500 to $600 a month. You should have a 5k account within 6 months at which point you can now increase your risk profile to $250 per trade, you will also have more screen time and learned the correct skills to trade intraday consistently.

Before anyone says percentage returns better than fund manager, a fund manager (where the concept of % returns comes from) gets a performance fee for achieving even 3% and also charges the fund lots of fees regardless if it is in a profit or not, secondly mutual funds have to ensure their investors don’t lose so they can’t take the same risks. Hedgefunds on the other hand generate in most cases triple and double digit % returns all the time and even they are restricted on exposure relative to retail. So again % are not a factor in retail as most balances are incredibly small.

Thought I drop another word in this again…

If you are a “seasoned” trader capable of living full time off an under funded (sub $50k) account… Then you already have more then enough money as you would have made more then $50k in the time it took to get there.

If you haven’t made $50k trading yet then you are by no means ready to trade full time. And if you have made $50k trading then your account should at least be that big as you should have been keeping your profits in your account… Hence you should have $50k at least in your account before thinking about trading full time.

Either an individual hasn’t made $50k yet (shouldn’t be trading full time if he hasn’t) … Or the individual has made $50k and is an idiot for not using a bigger account to see larger returns. Yes the latter “could” could go full time with an under funded account but someone smart enough to get to that point isn’t going to be stupid enough not to take full advantage of the returns by not adequately funding the account.

If you read my initial post you will see that I am responding to a post about a guy who claims to make over 100% returns a month and I am merely telling him that it is unrealistic to assume those kind of returns going forward as that would mean a 2k account would be worth 8m in a year.

You make your example sound like that is what an average trader would be able to make on a consistant basis but if that was the case all traders would be millionaires inside 3-5 years depending on their starting account.
I am not saying those returns are not possible I am jut saying I do not believe they are possible for the vast majority of traders. Not over a number of years.

Based on what starting account size?

There is a big difference making 50k in the markets based off a starting account of 1k or 100k.

[QUOTE=“rindoan;679712”] Based on what starting account size? There is a big difference making 50k in the markets based off a starting account of 1k or 100k.[/QUOTE] In my opinion it doesn’t matter. If you haven’t made $50k yet then you aren’t ready to trade full time.

If you made it off a bigger account than that means you are just going to have an even bigger account which means you will be even more adequately funded for going full time.

Not everyone who has made $50k is ready to go full time… But I don’t think anyone who hasn’t is ready to go full time.

I never knew there was a standard amount to go full time with! In my opinion it’s more psychological than financial! The amount really depends of what kind of trader you are. If you can consistently be profitable it doesn’t really matter what amount you have.

[QUOTE=“idude;679720”] I never knew there was a standard amount to go full time with! In my opinion it’s more psychological than financial! The amount really depends of what kind of trader you are. If you can consistently be profitable it doesn’t really matter what amount you have.[/QUOTE]

How do you define “consistently profitable”?

I would personally disagree.

Trading forex is a matter of % and not fixed amounts.

If you have been trading a 1000 usd account and you are consistantly making lets say 5% a month (I know returns are not consistent month to month but just consider it for arguments sake) and you see your account grow over a period of 2 years you would only have just over 3000 usd.

You could then just put in another 100k and if you keep the system the same you would see the same % returns although now on a much larger account.
Since you have been consistently profitable for 2 years I would say you are ready to trade for a living.