Hi all,
I am a relative newbie. Been looking in detail at forex for about 10 months.
Straightforward question: Is it possible to double up your initial capital in 1 year through slow and steady trading (ie. weekly and daily not 30min, 15min, 1min scalping) and only risking 2% on each position?
Is this possible/impossible, and if possible, is it easy, intermediate, or hard to achieve? How many have achieved this before, seriously?
Thanks!
Through use of compounding, quite easy, if you are a good trader and can execute a good method regularly. Make a spread sheet and put in your risk% and compound with every win. That will give you a better idea.
Newbie here as well…went from $2000 in an account to close to $3200. This is my 5th week of trading live. I would not say this was “easy” to achieve. Put in a lot of work with a demo account, developed a little system, and have put forth many hours of forex research.
ya its definitely possible. But like bama said, it takes lots of work. It took me 2 years of constant forex learning before I became consistent and doubled my money.
You can too, you just need a devotion to this line of business.
I am aware of compounding, but as soon as there are losses involved, it pushes out the P vs. time graph way out along the time axis. I guess, my question should be reworded: is it reasonable to expect to double up in one year with proper MM, a good strategy, and without gambling on huge leverage and getting lucky on one or two trades?
Yes, i’ve managed to demo trade with similar results, got up to 157% in two months but I lost it again went down to 120% after another month. I am planning to go live soon and I want to have realistic expectations.
I know experienced traders always say you shouldn’t focus on the money only method and execution, but seriously, who can say that it isn’t important! 
all you need is 20 pips a day consistently to double in about 3 months. but that’s the hard part so far for me. I’m still new too.
if you start with $1,000 capital in your account and trade one 0.1 mini lot that’s worth $1 a pip then that would be $20 a day. so in 50 days thats doubled your account. at 5 days a week thats ten weeks.
if you have a 20 pip stop loss then you are only risking 2% of your capital on each trade.
doesn’t matter how much you loose as long as you make enough to be up 20 pips a day.
thats just throwing some numbers out, maybe you make 10 pips a day or 30 or 50… it all depends on your skill and experience and some luck too I think
to double up in a year you would only need to make something like 2 pips a day
can be done but the more you intend to increase your account by genrally the more risk you have to carry in order to do such a thing,
i have taken a �100 LIVE trading acount and turned into �1000 in just over 1 week preoblem is i got carried away blew it all including the initial 100 so you can make quick money but its not always subsanable, doing it once is fine its keep repeating it thats the problem
Thats why I suggested a goal of 20 pips a day, someone else suggested it to me. for a good trader (and I’m not good yet) I think a slow steady 20 a day average is reasonable goal. and at that rate you could turn $100 into a mil in 3 years or less. so small consistent gains every day is the key. with exponential growth.
its definately possible with alot of time and effort but i’d have to disagree with your 20 pips a day target, the majors daily ranges are in the hundreds why would you only target 20 pips, just keep your risk management strict, you can trade off of support and resistance lines keeping your stop tight (20-50) pips yet targeting 100 - 200+ pips every trade, with a good system you can achieve a high win ratio and gains that greatly outweigh your losses gicing your account exponential growth especially when compounding, it is far easier trading longer timeframes and targeting several hundred pips than it is making small 20 pip gains which are highly unstable and often described as market (noise) ie not much direction making it harder to determine trend and make a profit from it, this is my personal opinion and although i do also “scalp” i would only consider doing so in the direction of my main trade on a pullback.
hope i helped 
any questions feel free to shoot me a message
good luck
I didn’t mean to say that you should limit yourself to only 20 pips a day, I was just saying that even making that small amount consistently can lead to a big income and not all that long a time to double your account size. Of course if you can make 100s of pips a day then do so. Personally, I’m still so new at this that I’m lucky to break even, but I have the concepts down!
Not true, you can double your account quite easily without increasing your risk. It dependa alot on your trading style, the pairs you trade. etc etc…
I trade the GBP/JPY and double my account every 5-6 weeks or so with no more than 2% risk per trade… For “fast growth” you need volatility, which can work against you if you don’t know what your doing and decimate your account.
Patience & discipline = Success…
Great weekend all
Cdawg, I’d be interested in hearing your trading strategy on the p/y , I’m new and like to hear from those who are sucessful so I can get good idea of how to trade. right now I’m using simple support resistance and trying to flow with the trends. still have a lot to learn though.
As per my Expereince, it depends on how much Risk you are willing to take. With Medium level of Risk, you can EASILY double your account in less than 3 Months, PROVIDED, you have a sound knowledge of different indicators and you are always looking at different news and data releases. I saw someone who, very rightly, said it’s possible to double up, problem is you can loose Money as well if you dont have a clear mind. My expereince has taught me how important it is to understand different technical tools but also how to implement them.
It’s not an impossible ask, though it requires lot of hard work.
thats on the right track, key to trading is to find a method that suites your personality…
Those guys who achieve those results do not use proper money management, and will blow up thier accounts just as easy as increasing them. Look at the winners from month to month, they are never the same.
I would not recommend following thier example… yes its possible… but if you want to trade for a long time, i would not recommend it…