I am new to the forums, as well as Forex. My friend turned me on to currency trading a year or so ago. I am completely new to the idea. I am not really to sure where to start. I am thinking that I need to read up on it and try one of the free 50k portfolios. I have one main question I would like to as before I invest massive amounts of time on this. How much money will I need to get started? The minimum amount? How fast can I expect to turn decent profits. I know these questions are really open ended. I am just looking for a basic idea. Any input will be appreciated.
Hello and welcome to babypips. You would do a great favor to yourself by finishing the school of pipsology (Click the school tab on the top of the page). Demo trading with paper money is the best thing you can do before you start working on real money. No amount is big enough in forex if we are not sure how to trade as you must be knowing 95% fail here and there is no holy grail. Disciplined emotionless trading will get you there.
You can start with any amount you’d like, even $1.
It depends on your budget, but I generally recommend starting somewhere in the $50-$100 range, and then adding more money later once you’ve proven yourself successful.
How fast you’ll get “decent profits” is really too open ended of a question to answer. It depends on your personality, trading style, what you consider “decent”, and account balance.
If you can tell us something like “I’m a 18 year old college student with $500 to invest. I don’t have a lot of time to trade so I want to trade Daily charts and only monitor my trades a few minutes per day” we can give you a ballpark estimate of how much an experinced trader (not a new trader) can make.
In that example I’d say an experienced trader could make 2%-10% per month.
Awesome! This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for taking the time to reply to my posts. I am excited to start. I am almost completely emotionless when it comes to these things. This could be perfect. Again, thanks for taking the time to answer my basic questions.
Hi All,
I’m another newbie wanting to learn and I will go through the school carefully,
is there any New Zealanders in the forum that I could buddy up with.
invicta 120
I do not agree. It may be true for “some personalities”. For myself I only use demo to learn the platform. Meaning where “to click” to do the trades, reports or whatever I want to do. This can be done in hours or days depending on your background.
Trading with real money IMHO is much different to paper trading. My recommendation is to start with a small account and start trading. I personally only learn if I get to feel the reward and pain of my actions / decisions.
And Testing strategies (at least the ones I use) can be done much more efficient in a spreadsheet than in a real-time demo account.
My tips
[ul]
[li]Read the school section of this web page
[/li][li]Use strict money management rules (Stops, Take Profit -> risk reward ratio)
[/li][li]Define your entry strategy (why/ when do you enter a trade)
[/li][/ul]
To make a profit you will need to find a “good combination” of
[ul]
[li]Percentage of winning trades
[/li][li]Risk reward ratio
[/li][/ul]
Meaning you can have either
[ul]
[li]Many winning trades with high risk/ reward (eg 1:1)
[/li][li]Some winning trades with low risk/ reward (eg 1:3)
[/li][/ul]
If you find a system that generates many winning trades with low risk/reward, let me know
