How much one makes on average/month with investment of 1000$

Beginner Questions
1

Hello all

I am a total newbie and still reading babypips school and i can see that forex is good fun in learning but at the same time it needs a lot of time to reall master it to the extent that I should be in profit.

I want to ask a question, as it would matter to me how much time I would invest in it. I am thinking of investing 1000$ in forex( not now but 2 months down the line) , if I do reasonably and spend about 2 hours each day on my computer, how much return can i expect per month.

How much an averagly successful forex trader makes per 1000$ of investment.

I ll appreciate your answers

Deepak

2

Hey welcome to the exciting world of 4X… I wish someone would have tell me that when I posted my first thread. Instead I got all kinds of negative answers. And that is because the question I posted wasn’t as hard to answer as yours. All I asked, since I was new not only to forex but to everything that has to do with putting your hard earned money at risk, was if this was the thing for me. I posted what my job was, how much I made and how much time I had available to learn. Yet most answers weren’t very encouraging. But that didn’t put me down, in fact it gave me the push I needed (may be that was what I needed and they knew it…hey thx anyway). So I said to myself “I’m going to prove this f#!#ers wrong”. Anyways, enough of me. Here is my personal experience.

I started just like you with the school at babypips. Awesome website by the way. In the mean time I opened a demo account with oanda and started with $1000 since that is as much as I would be able to open an account with (my wife won’t let me do anymore :mad: ). After going thru the whole school I started trading using the Cowa-whatever system that they also offer on this website. That was 4 weeks ago. The systems works very very well. After two weeks I stopped using it because most of the good signals are generated when I’m sleeping. I need my energy to concentrate on the job that at the end is going to help fund my account. But it works well (also look at its track record). After that I kept going to “Big pipins” blog and his predictions are pretty accurate. Meantime I kept learning and reading more while trying to come up with a different system that will allow me to trade either during the day or on daily or 4 hrs charts where I can leave my positions open for several days.

So, to answer your questions, after 4 weeks of demo trading with a starting balance of $1000 I expect to close my last position today for a net profit of 300 pips. I have been trading $1 pips so that is $300.

Once you finish the school, create your plan and set a goal. That could be the most important step you ever take. I don’t look at my account today and see that I had only made $300 in 4 weeks. Heck I could do double that doing side jobs if I wanted to. I look at the pips. My goal right know is to grow my account to be able to trade $10 pips. So I look at the pips and I realize that in the future that would have been not $300, but $3000. In 4 weeks?.. heck, that’s like having another salary for me.

After posting this, some may come and say that trading dollar pips with a $1000 account is kinda crazy (either that or I don’t understand money management) or that I have been just hit by begginers luck. Eitherway, another thing you will learn is that we all have a different way of seeing risk. Not only two humans do not see the same thing the same way, but also, everybodys financials are different. I try my best to pretend this demo account is real money. Because that is another thing everyone will tell you, that once you switch to real money things change. I don’t know about that. Once I switch to real money I’ll tell you.

I hope this answer your questions, because I’ve seen several threads started with questions like yours and they always get shut down because everybody tries to tell you how much of an idiot you are for asking that instead of educating you by each one giving their own experience.

Push forward, don’t look back…oh, and sorry, english is my second language and there may be several mistakes on the spelling and grammar.

3

Excellent Advice sivanski!

I’d like to add that things are slightly different when you go to live trading. I just went to live trading about two months ago and it’s like I never demo traded because your now using real money. I started off breaking all my rules and everything that I read for the last two years because of impatience in waiting for my system to generate a signal. I now have alerts sent to my cell phone waking me up during the morning hours when the trading is good and it is working out fine. I regrouped and now I’m back on track :slight_smile: . I also think that noone can really answer this question because it is different for everyone out there. How much you can make depends on many factors like:

  1. How much experience do you have (demo trading, etc…)
  2. Can you be disciplined enought to follow your system completely and adapt when the market does what it wants to.
  3. Can you follow good money management rules.
  4. How much time can you devote to FX.
  5. How good is your system (when you make and test one that is)
  6. This list can go on and on forever but you get the point.

Good Luck! I’m in this for the long haul using small amounts of money since DEMO trading was not real enough for me. I learned so much more trading with real money (small amounts) than I could have ever learned through the DEMO but everyone is different which is why this question generates some negative answers. It could be years before I generate nice profits but someday I could easily triple or more, my puny paycheck while trading on the side so it will be well worth it in the longrun. [B][I]Patience & Discipline are the name of this game!![/I][/B]

Topgun

4

Thanks…Glad to help. My whole point is, teach by example. It doesn’t take much reading to understand that not all of us will get the same results, but what this questions are for is a sounding of what the future could look like. Tell me if it is not true that is very hard to find a thread where someone asks how much money everyone else is doing and you get 100 answers but not a single number. The whole idea behind the questions is: I know this is not a given, but if I do it rigth I could make as much as this guys…may be more…or may be less. Buy may be if I made just a quarter of what this guys are posting here, I would have enought to boost my retirement account, or to save for my kid’s college. I’m not saying they are wrong answers but I would at least add at the bottom “… with that said, here is may own personal experience…”

Is like if you take a new job in a company that you know it’s been is business for 50 years but after being there for a week you realize their turnover rate is 95% (it’s been estimated that 95% of people fail at forex). Then you ask yourself: is this job for me?. More than likely you will go to the 5% that made it and ask them what the future looks like for them and plan your own future to try to be part of that 5%. Planning your future [U]includes[/U] knowing how much you could [U]potentially[/U] get paid if you do become part of that 5% that makes it. In this case it may not be money, you get paid pips, but you get the picture.

Hope this helps some more.

5

topgun: You make an interesting point. I’ve been demo trading off and on for some months now (not being flippant, just got interrupted by some family affairs for a bit), and I’ve learned a lot from that. But you’ve confirmed my suspicion that a real money account significantly changes the equation. I couldn’t help but think that would have to be the case, but wasn’t sure exactly what would appear to change… besides maybe a potentially harsh lesson about what margin and leverage do with a real money account. I’m also planning to put up a small amount of money and test what I’ve learned from demo trading soon. When I’m sure I’ve learned to manage the small bits, I’ll put my real capital up and be on my way!

docweb: Good question, but your preamble very nearly answers it, I think. The FOREX’s worth to you will depend on how much time you’re willing to put into it. The numbers will change from week to week and vary depending on which trader you’re talking about. The pip school illustrates this by profiling a few different traders and explaining how different their lifestyles and trading habits are. While we could spout all sorts of figures at you, it is virtually impossible to give you a meaningful number for an answer.

My advice would be to start with a demo account; that is one that lets you practice making Forex decisions with ‘play money’. Once you’ve gone through the pip school, make a plan and work it with your demo account (I use one called ‘FXGAME’). Keep a log of your Forex activity – you’ll need this to make the most of your learning time. Take your time and get comfortable with the Forex and the interface for you demo account. In the process of doing this, you WILL lose significant amounts of play money. Just keep resetting your account weekly and working your plan until you are comfortable with the way things work. This will take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, depending on you. Let it come – as you will learn, the Forex is not a sprint, it’s a marathon that rewards those who have the endurance to stay with it. Patient demo trading will give you this endurance.

When you are finally comfortable with manipulating large amounts of (play) money by clicking with your mouse, and you know the interface like the back of your mouse hand, go over your log and your plan and decide what you should tweak in order to fine tune your system. Make a new log, outline your new plan in it, and set your demo account to the amount that would be in it if you were using real money. Make generous use of your stop losses (these will keep you from losing your shirt many many times). NOW the fun begins. NOW you’ve learned enough to begin answering your question for yourself. Note that you’re still working on a DEMO account here. It will be quite some time before you’re ready to risk any real money.

If I understand you correctly, you wish to allot the amount of time you spend on learning the Forex according to what you can expect to make from it. Unfortunately, you’re going to find that logic working in reverse… what you make from it will depend on how much time you’re willing to devote to learning it, as well as how honest you can be with yourself. And we may as well begin with that honesty: this is going to take time and patience to learn. If you don’t accept that from the outset, the question won’t be how much a Forex trader can expect to make per $1,000. It will be how much he can expect to LOSE.

6

You guys know how to frustrate impatient people. I have a small attention span. All these large posts. :frowning: How am I supposed to read all this quickly?

Hmmm… Oh well, I’ll do it tomorrow. :o

Now this will still be on the first page so I don’t have to go to page two.

7

Heh. I think impatient people are probably the most likely to lose their money.

:cool:

8

Impatience is why I trade daily instead of weekly or monthly. :slight_smile:

9

This isn’t impatience. It sounds more like laziness to me. :smiley:

10

I read this thread just in time for ForexNinja to post before me. I believe you. Funny I think every post said something about impatience. I like the help you offer each other. I wish I would have found this forum four or five years ago.

I have opened a demo to find out the question.:slight_smile:

11

The demo is $1000. The leverage is 400:1. The amount of simulated currency I am controling per lot is $1,000. This will gain or lose $.10 per pip per currency pair. I have place four trades risking .59% of margin. Lets see how things go.:wink:

12

Heres some advice that I heard when I first looked at fx trading. A gentleman I know said to find one pair and study it. He’s traded usd/cad for 15 years and is making a good living. Study one pair and find out is quirks. Find out when it usually trends up or down [ 000 gmt or 700 gmt or 1200 gmt. Every pair has a certain time that it trades well, and times that it doesn’t. Study it until you know it like the back of your hand. Know it well enough that you can almost guess where it is going. When you try to trade more than one pair you get confused. Also find where you can get 20 pips regularly. 20 ten dollar pips is better than trying for to get 50 one dollar pips. A pair will generally move 15 -20 pips easily. where 50 pips is alot harder. Here is a hint, usd/jpy will move almost regularly 20-30 pips at around 000 gmt. Check it out. Use a simple 21 moving average at 15 minutes.

13

saab87,

That is great advice. I liked the USD/JPY when I first started. I had a buddy who was amazed how well I new that pair. After a time he told me that all pairs act similar to that. I started to look at other pairs. He was correct. All of them do there thing, the same type of thing, just at different times and different price levels. I am very thankful that I learned the way I did, and very thankful for my buddy who helped me open my mind. His favorite pair is GBP/USD. You gave great advice.

14

First day on the $1,000 demo, 52 pips. That would be $5.20 at the current trade rules. My friend said that there is over 200 trading days in a year. If this was an average you would have made over $1,040 in one year. This is a 100% RIO/yr. :slight_smile:

15

5.20$ isnt a whole lot, but could you imagine if it was 10,000$ account. after the first year you could take your first 10,000$ out and not have to worry about loosing your money. i would be able to relax so easy at the point.

16

The $1,000 question has a new answer today.

Close positions gaining $18.42.

That’s a little better.

18.42
[U]+5.21[/U]
23.62

Divide by 2 for an average of 11.82/day.:slight_smile:

If %5.20/day on average gave you a 100% ROI in one year, that means %11.82 would do twice as good.

200%/yr ROI or better, without compounding.

That’s pretty good on $1,000.

17

dad he wants to know monthly not yearly
to corrent my dads mitake:rolleyes:
11.82$ times 20tradeing days in a month
equalls 236.20$ a month
[times 12makes 2834.40$ a year just form y dad]:smiley:

18

That math is close enough. What is a dime here or there? I recommend spell check son.

That nut didn’t fall far from the tree. :smiley:

Love to the boy!:slight_smile:

19

like father like son, DAD!:smiley:

(and its time u quit usen my smileys!)

20

Close positions gaining $13.97.

13.97
18.42
[U]+5.21[/U]
37.60

Divide by 3(days) for an average of 12.53/day.:slight_smile:

3.76% ROI to date.