With unemployment taking it’s toll on my finances, family and psychology, I’ve decided to take that last $250 I have and start FOREX trading. I need to make an income and I don’t want to be unemployed ever again. I’m jumping in head first to gain the knowledge and wisdom to make the income I know I can and retire sooner rather than later and enjoy the rest of my life. With this pandemic I know that life is too short to commit to a job that someone else controls your actions and the direction of your journey. If you can mentor me in this process, please let me know.
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Good luck.
Although you have started with only a little capital, it might be enough. If this money is precious to you and hard to replace, the thing to focus on is not the capital but the percentages. When you have a strategy and start trading, make sure your risk per trade is 1% of your capital, 2% at the very most.
It might be impossible right now but try and not withdraw any cash from the account until you are making a full salary every year. You need to make 6% per month profits in order to double your money in a year. You could be earning a healthy salary in less than 10 years if you can do this.
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This is ridiculous.
You can’t make an income by gambling with your last $250.
You will lose it all and waste time in the process that you could have applied to looking for and working a real job.
No one here can teach you how to make a living from $250 in forex. That’s impossible. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to scam you.
Successful traders are people who plan ahead and trade only when the odds are in their favor.
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Oh, I didn’t know that. What would be the minimum to start? How much are you using to trade daily? What is your win:lose stats to far?
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To be profitable one needs enough knowledge and understanding of the market. With superficial idea of trading, it’s the easiest way to lose money quickly. If you really want to do trading, spend a lot of time in learning and researching.
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The minimum to start is zero dollars. You need to practice on a demo account until you understand how numbers work in this market, and until you have saved up enough, after taking care of your living expenses with a job, to afford risking any money on trading.
I have over $250K (of my own money, not counting leverage) deposited across multiple trading accounts.
My win rate is just over 40%. My average loss is about 1% of my equity and my average win is about 2% which means I’m profitable overall.
So far this year, I have made enough from trading to replace the income of a full-time job, and I still don’t think I’m ready to quit my day job. That’s because the returns from trading are very volatile. I’m still not at the point where I can reliably withdraw enough money every month to pay bills without hampering my goals to continue growing my equity. In fact, I’m down this month after being profitable the previous 3 months.
Trading is not a get rich quick solution. If you approach it that way, you will fail. There are no shortcuts. I haven’t arrived yet, but I’m further along the path than many people who try to downplay the difficulty of making a full-time living from trading.
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Full marks for profit-making @YenPounder, but we don’t often hear about strategies with a win rate as low as 40%. What sort of strategy is it? how wid you get there? - i.e. did you find the strategy just as you currently use it or did you optimise it to improve the return, driving down the win rate as a side-effect?
I automate my strategy using various technicals. I consider fundamentals only to manage risk. For example, I might reduce my leverage for major new events or go flat completely as I’m doing for the US elections.
As with most people, I started with a strategy that had a higher win rate, but as I optimized it for the best expected value (win rate times average win minus loss rate times average loss), I arrived at my current win rate of about 43%.
Personally, I’m suspicious of people claiming win rates much above 65%. To me it suggests they might not be cutting losses. Expected value is more important than win rate.
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Nice, thanks. We’re together on some things - I’m also going flat for the US election - I also distrust high win rates quoted.
But I couldn’t bring myself to go to work on a strategy that had a negative win rate, just don’t have your perseverance.
Even Ted Williams only hit .344 
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I’ve also got to be a little negative about self-employment from trading. The decisions in my life with the best financial outcomes were not from trading. They were -
- got a recognised qualification for a specific job (got paid to train and walked straight into a permanent full-time position)
- paid a lot of money into a pension scheme from Day 1
- bought a house in a growing city
- when I moved into a new career, I made myself essential as part of the solution to every problem the business had
Take the pressure off your shoulders. Get a job.
It’s good that you have started with a small amount in the beginning. That’s what I advise to all the new traders.
Hey there! I guess you’re too desperate to make fast money through trading but it’s really important that you first get your basics cleared about the trade rather than investing your last $250. Start gradually and begin with small investments. Select a broker after detailed research. Design a strategy and what you’re expecting, analyze everything, from your currency pairs to the strategy you’ve followed and keep practicing before you end up your last resource.
You can’t make money with forex with 15k in your account. Forex is for large accounts.