How much do average full time traders trade with?

Beginner Questions
21

[QUOTE=“rindoan;679730”] 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.[/QUOTE]

Why not wait to see if you can make $50k after depositing the $100k as proof that you can manage it before going full time?

22

I don’t have special definitions, if you don’t know what that means you should try a good dictionary.

23

This idea is just insane, there are countries in world today where if you can make 2 or 3 hundred dollars per month you can actually live with that much. So it also depends where you live! You may need 100K if you live in NYC but if you live in some poor African Country you might need 2K.

24

[QUOTE=“idude;679743”] I don’t have special definitions, if you don’t know what that means you should try a good dictionary.[/QUOTE] It is pretty subjective actually… I suspect my idea of “consistently profitable” is different then yours.

25

First week: You do 10 trades, you get stopped out in 6 of them and get 4 of them to their target yet you are still profitable

Second week: You do 7 trades, loose 4 of them and win 3 of them yet you are still profitable

and so on and on and on… it doesn’t mean u are profitable in all of them.

26

I agree with the all is relative statement. I can live VERY well where I am at on $1500 a month. If I were to make that much, yes, it would be nice for more, but I could very easily roll the money I make more than that over into the account, and just stay with percentages, rather than fixed trading amounts. Eventually I would be making good cash. If I EVER made it to 1 mill, I would just take it all out, put it in fixed 8-9% interest accounts, never “work” for the money again, and live off the interest not like a king, but like a tzar :slight_smile:

27

…
I see the problem differently. As a day trader I sort of invented the idea of
micro scalping. In this discipline, instead of using 1-2% of your Buying Power,
you want to use about 25% of your Buying Power. However, you are not
"guessing" and have tight control over the situation constantly.

Assuming you can avoid stopping out, and Win or Break Even 90% of the
time, this is a real Game Changer. I don’t even use Stops at all, because
I am in control and have 3 ways of recovering from network loss, and
closing a position in an emergency, which rarely happens.

Being a “control freak” myself, I sometimes am too obsessed about detail,
but once I’ve made a “controlled entry” into a position I just SOH a little
bit (Sit On my Hands) and let my position move further into profit, rather
than to “snap” little profits just because I can…

The trick is to have Analytics which are (almost) never wrong about the
short term trend which matches your typical trade duration. Now that
was a Huge challenge which I have adequately achieved. I’m just saying
that so many approach Trading as Educated Guessing, whereas I approach
it with (almost total) Control and high certainty. So it is a game changer
if you can achieve that…

My analytics are not based upon Price but, of course, I am aware of the
Price Action profile. My analytics are based upon Market Maker (aka
Liquidity Provider) Quote placement patterns on the Book, and that is
a Leading Indicator of where they will move the market. Once you have
that, then the Risk situation is radically altered.

Trading is like a moderately entertaining, not too stressful, Video game :slight_smile:
Many of the trade entries are taken by specialized triggers, so I don’t
have to “press the button” myself. (What? A slow human clicking Buy?
Why do that when the computer can assist you with that…) I just
"arm" the triggers, and let them do the work.

And, very significantly, keeping in mind the SNB Swiss Franc / Euro
exchange rate debacle recently… Very importantly, I am in the market
only when there is significant opportunity, and then I am flat. So
my chances of getting “caught out” are rather small.

So to address the OP’s question, I need far less in the trading account
since, if it’s Buying Power is not being used, why keep it in the
trading account at all ? That’s my attitude.

HyperScalper

28

On a forex trading forum I would expect people to better understand currencies and inflation and so on. Tell me in which country/currency you get 8-9% interest on a fixed account where you don’t risk waking up 20% poorer than you went to bed.

I usually don’t comment in never-ending threads like these but I have some time on hand so I thought let’s dive in. You guys are all arguing good points but where it all goes wrong is definitions of terminology.

What’s full time trading, when are you professional, what constitutes a consistent win rate etc etc. If you ever wanna take this anywhere please define all this. But most important how much are you expecting to get out of trading monthly.

Some people might be making 300 dollars a month from their parents basement and ‘live of that’. Others have family and 3 kids to take care off and need at least 10 times that amount.

I can only speak for myself and I should start by saying I am not a fulltime trader. I am trading for the better part of 3 years now, I am still on my first account but I have almost busted it twice. Last time was a little over a year ago. I have since than cleaned up my act and stopped gambling. Since than I have averaged 19,1% a month (over the past 12 months). Let’s for argument and safety say I can do 15% in the long run. It will take quite a while longer of consistent returns before I could even consider doing this for a living and even than I am not sure I’d want it. But I would need at least a 20k account but thats simply based on my financial needs. More important to deal with would be the increased pressure. Right now I trade for fun, it’s almost like a game to me. No bills are paid with the wins, no people depend on it. I would probably effect my trading with the thought in mind it’s gonna have to pay for the bills, and I think as long as this is the case, I am not confident enough/ ready to be a fulltime trader no matter what my winrate/accountsize/risk management plan is.

Last but not least. I do not follow any ‘guru’ I do not copy anybodies system, I do not jump from idea to idea (anymore). And I can recommend everybody the same. Find your own game, find your own system, be yourself in trading and stop looking at what others do. Allow yourself to try new things, make your own mistakes, and have FUN with trading. Good luck all

29

An average trader is required to have at least $10,000 to start a real trading account; but if that advice is maintained, many people won’t be trading forex today because lots of people may not be able come up with such capital. It is actually possible for traders to get a real account with $100 or less from brokers like Profiforex and Oanda; that means you have to trade with 1 mini lot per trade.

30

Yours is better suited for part time right now. Maybe you could grow bigger with time and become full time. All the very best.

31

Ok I have a really crazy idea of how you would come up with how much you need. Its about using leverage to your advantage. Leverage is basically the amount of money a broker will lend you in return of your deposit. So now lets say you do have $10,000 available to trade. And let’s say you don’t know if that $10,000 is enough to make a good profit for you to live with every day.

Well let me ask you, wouldn’t trading $1,000,000 make you good profits?

Great. Deposit only $3,000 in your account and set your leverage to 1:500. If you don’t have a 1:500 leverage, deposit $5,000 at a leverage of 1:200.

Congratulations, you now have $1,000,000 available to trade with. You also have not deposited the entire $10,000 all together. So if you blow up that account you still have money left in your bank to re-deposit.

It is also imperative if you use this method (well actually the following is always important) [B]to control your lot size so that your stop loss is only 1% of your $10,000 if you are a long-term trader. If you are a day trader or swing trader, your stop loss should only be 0.1-0.2% of the $10,000.[/B]

This is due to something called draw down. For example I’m a long-term trader. I entered a total of 12 trades in 2015 and closed only three of them so far. Each trade risked 1% of my investment so I risked a total of 12% in a month and a half.
All of the three trades I entered where losers. But because I trade a really amazing I still made a return of +1.6% on those three “losing” trades. So my success rate is (9/12)*100= 75%

Now this stat changes dramatically if you are a day trader.

If you make five trades a week, you would have made 30 trades already…that’s a risk of 30% and we are not even a quarter of the year through. So trading 0.25% per trade means you risked 7.5%

Imagine that the day traders’ system was also 75% successful. And imagine the worst, the first 25 trades he would take were losers and the 75 following ones will win. That means that if he risked 1% per trade, he would have lost 20% of his entire investment money ($2000 out of $10,000). Actually he would have lost more but this for the sake of simplification.

But had he used only 0.25% per trade, he would have lost just $625.

32

I don’t understand a word of this!!!
How can you say your success rate is 75% when you only closed 3 of them so far What if the other 9 also become losers?
Loosing 25 trades in a row with 1% is actually more then 20% but statistical not right If you loose more the 10% from your account you should go back to demo trading.
What if the day traders R:R is 1:2 and increasing the risk daily with part of the profit and compounding With a 75% success rate I bat he / she makes 100% a month BUT I also don’t believe there are many traders who can do so and making 10% a month is very good and achievable .

The SL of 0.1% or 0.2% doesn’t make sense It depends on R:R and success rate Most traders agree with 1% or 2% as acceptable Some of them a little bit more but you are the first with 12% risk every single day of the month A day trader has only 1% risk per day and you can not make this 30% because there are 30 days in a month It is depending on the complete system R:R MM and stats if you want to calculate draw down.

But I like to learn from you how to make +1.6% from a losing trade

33

so is this place where you live poland or…