I see many people asking “How much money to get started”?
Several brokers will allow you to deposit as little as $25 in your broker account to get started.
The amount of money is not the answer because you will learn this through proper risk management, and you will not get an exact answer in “the amount of money” to start with.
The truth comes from “Your Experience” as you grow as a trader.
Become consistant with focusing on Pips, not money. For example : Some people scalp for 30 pips a day. They will learn a structure and approach several strategies until they find their niche using a method they can understand.
Once they are consistant and can see the average “Pip per trading day”, they can move into proper leverage and risk management. Depending on your style and your patience.
Once you develop a method and you are consistant with you trades and have a “realistic goal” of how many pips per day you can actually trade. Then your will get your answer on how much money you need.
One rule people use is 1-3% of the balance. So for an example if $100 is the balance in the trading account, only leverage .01. If I have $1000 then I would leverage no more than .10
So the 1st step is to learn a strategy that works for you.
Then once you develop some good trading habits you can see results based on your method and style that works for you, start small and earn your balance as you grow. Learn from your mistakes and grow your knowledge and your balance as you grow as a trader.
Learning how to trade isnt the hard part, controlling your emotions and your greed is going to be the challenge. Once you have those under control, then you’ll develop your strategy based on the time frame and time zone you trade in. Your Risk management and your patience to find the right trade and follow through.
This is not an overnight skill. It takes time, patience, persistance, then you need to be consistant.
After reading all the essays on what you must do in these posts, I will tell you what I told Manxx
In the context of quantum mechanics, you will receive an answer, no matter how incomplete the question. In quantum physics on the other hand, your question would be rejected as invalid or not complete in complexity.
I am sorry to say, but your question at the beginning of this thread was incomplete, even though everybody had an opinion, including myself.
Ignoring time paradox and sticking to the post thread, you said the following:
1…You started yesterday
2…How much money do you need?
To answer you would be complicated at best, since your validity is negative on your question.
But this is the best I can do with the info available:
You are meat to the machine, due to your experience…This is not an insult, we all started that way. It is the brutal truth, you will spend months, even years feeding the beast before you become profitable…School fees
How much to start of with? One of the Babypips admins wrote an article few weeks ago about people starting with too little, and another article equally important about NOT using short time frames if you are not experienced. Read those two articles, if you can’t find them, simply send a message to the Babypips admins, I am sure they will point you in the right direction.
Good hunting in the bloody trenches of FX trading.
I started with 100$ with leverage of 2000. I kept going without knowing margin leverage etc. I kept earning very well. This pushed me more to earn more. One day everything lost because system force sell everything so I left with one $. I did trade enough on demo etc. But live trading is totally different. So in one way loosing initially is also better to learn the right lesson, if u don’t have a mentor. So trade safe with as little as 50$. Then increase .
a perfect example of not doing this was Friday… Last Friday I had a lot of free time and chose to spend it in front of the charts trying to catch the bottoms on faster time frames, using larger lot sizes than typical for me.
Was not very pretty as my drawdown is now at a historic high for me.
Be patient, stick to your rules trade the dailies with small lot sizes like .01.
As trades go in your favor you can add additional .01s
I understand what you are saying in this regard, that is why I have separate accounts for different reasons. As a beginner, I traded a FX pair regardless, ended up having multiple losses at once.
Now I trade indexes in 1 account, FX in another and stocks in a separate one.
Getting back to FX trading, if you find yourself opening a specific currency in a buy when you have 3 of them in a sell…You are in trouble! Shut it down and analyze the paradox.
Since January of this year so yeah we’ll see what the future holds! No billions yet but I’m getting to the point where I’m nicely supplementing my work income … my wife said I can’t quit my day job until I have $200,000 sitting in a bank … cheers guys!
Hi dpaterso, re: your question about working for a bank or a hedge fund -> I like making money just the way I do including the freedom to trade when I want wearing my pajamas for example I have ZERO interest in making more than I am already or working for a big institution … part of my success comes from learning few dirty tricks from such institutions and I must say I’m not always happy about it … I’m a man of faith and knowing that Forex is a less then a zero sum game for most retail traders presents a real moral dilemma for me … that is mainly why I choose to trade for myself and my family only …
You are correct about experience and a hard road getting to this point … I’ve blown few accounts in the past as I’m sure everyone of us has or will LOL but I didn’t take those lessons lightly and yes it was a huge learning lesson in terms of my own personal psychology … one of my mentors once said: trading is so easy you could have a 5 yo next to you clicking buy or sell, it’s how you manage that trade afterwards will make you a winner or a loser … I have learned that nothing can be farther from the truth … to this day my biggest obstacle in trading is ME
I don’t intend to offend anyone here but I honestly think that one of the main reasons why most of you guys fail to succeed in trading is that you spend too much time on forums such as this and other social media outlets … key word being distraction … imagine a brain surgeon during a surgery clicking likes on FB and commenting on babypips LOL do you think his patient will survive such ordeal? You need focus, positivity and full understand of your own psychology before you can even begin making money in Forex … here is my update, May turned out pretty good
You don’t have to prove anything my good man. At least not to me.
Still: I wouldn’t get too far ahead of myself if I were you. It’s early days. Nice gains. But early days.
A graphic like that isn’t really worth much to be honest. Matter of fact I’m starting to question a LOT of these statistics that are being thrown around both here and on other threads. In just using your statistics as an example (not singling you out by any means): nobody knows the risks involved in generating those gains and that’s just to start with. Maybe somebody is over trading and betting the farm and just happens to have had a good run up until now. The statistics would look wonderful. But they don’t reflect that hidden risk and that ONE time that the trader who is over trading WILL eventually be on the wrong side of a sustained move against them.
As for the forums: my own trading dictates that I spend no more than a half hour each night before the NYSE close. So I’m quite happy with the distraction during the day.
Anyway. I wish you well. If you can sustain those gains then I couldn’t be happier for you
My $3,000 I started out with on April 11, 2019 has as of today made $11,700+, over 390%. Hope to hit $12,000 today. These gains seem surreal, fake, scammy, but believe me they’re real.
What are the risks? Well, I realize there’s always the risk of blowing up the account. ALWAYS. That’s why I set aside profits into a sub-account and park them there. Capital was $3,000 but last week took $3,000 in profits and added it to capital, resulting in $6K in the main account and another $6K in the sub-account just in case I blew up.
Here’s what metatrader marketplace says when I tried to sign up the account for copy trade signals (was going to link accounts of my relatives).
“This is a newly opened account, and the trading results may be of random nature”.
I look at that every now and then to keep me grounded. Who knows, I might blow up today, tomorrow, next week, next month. Feels like being a recovering alcoholic, always a chance of relapse.
But will withdraw some profits by end of the week. Will be more than enough to provide for my family’s expenses.
Not sure I’d concern myself too much with those statistics. They appear to be a crass attempt to indicate that your strategy is high risk. We already know this. Only one that would concern me is the 30% drawdown. Then again that was a while ago (relatively speaking). And that’s pretty rich coming from me too let’s be honest.
Keep grounded but don’t dwell too much on the possible negative aspects. That type of thing can become a self fulfilling prophecy.
With good experience good efficiency (RR and hit ratio) 5-10% monthly what I think possible consistently without “overtrade”. Some may say trading is boring. They are true that’s why the dont do it, but it depends on the person’s style and habit. Dont forget, for some people like me, football is boring because watching little figures running up and down and I cant do anything. Same is F1. Is flying an airplane boring? Yes it is! You are just sitting, dont run to anywher, dont talk to anybody, whatching only some strange instruments, lookin at the map sometimes, look out and gripping the yoke. For me it is great, for others boring.
Give it five in my opinion. Three ain’t long enough to ensure that encounter one of those black swan events. Only once you’ve encountered one of those and are still standing thereafter can you say that what you are doing is consistent and can weather any storm. Ask me how I know!!! LOL!!! But hey: obviously just my personal opinion.
But I will tell you something that occurred to me just yesterday and reminded me of just how messed up my life was some years ago because of this business. I just yesterday happened across a thread that somebody had posted some years ago where they made a sort of short documentary about their friend who is APPARENTLY a successful multi millionaire FOREX trader. No reason to question what I saw. But man: that’s not a life and that in spite of APPARENTLY being able to make loads of money and buy fancy houses and cars and whatever else. The dude cannot even go to the shops in peace without worrying that he’s going to miss a trade and has to rush back to his home office. Or go to bed with his iPad etc. to check news or for signals. You get the picture. Again: ask me how I know. There are a few years of my life that are just a blur for such reasons. Missed out on a lot of life I can tell you. And I didn’t even come out at the end of it with money. Dunno. I suppose if you need that kind of pressure and excitement well then you’re good to go I suppose. But be careful: success in this business may come at a price that you may not be aware of. Until you are and must pay the piper.
Learn to trade profitably. Keep a trading journal. And after about a year or two of trading live you could look for a position at a prop firm and have access to more capital. This would allow you to build your own capital while making a decent income if you ultimately want to trade for yourself.
This is not an option that everyone would want to take but it is the way I did it quite some time ago.
It really depends on what you expect. First of all, very likely your monthly income pattern will be looking like +x, +y, 0, -z, +a, etc. You won’t be receiving 5% income every month. Your balance will be going up and down. That is why it is reasonable to get a three-month average at least. Expect real profits to be roughly about 10% in a three-month period (including fees, slippage, missed opportunities, etc, etc). If you need to have $10,000 within a quarter and you make about 10%, then you shall be looking for a capital of approximately $100,000
I’ll make sure to read and absorb everything. Thank you to all the members of this community!
… my wife said I can’t quit my day job until I have $200,000 sitting in a bank … cheers guys!
I have ZERO interest in making more than I am already or working for a big institution … part of my success comes from learning few dirty tricks from such institutions and I must say I’m not always happy about it … I’m a man of faith and knowing that Forex is a less then a zero sum game for most retail traders presents a real moral dilemma for me … that is mainly why I choose to trade for myself and my family only …
