I am pretty young, 18 to be honest. Still a highschool senior; looking for a way to make a decent income. Nothing even incredible, I’d be happy with even below $20,000 a year. I started reading the school guide until I got to the piece that declared you shouldn’t do anything without at least $10,000 start up capitol.
Is there anyway for a highschool student to realistically try this? If not, just let me know.
Thanks!
I started when I was 16 : )
Well, what I honestly think is this:
Before anybody starts with any sort of own business it can’t be bad to learn something about working in a company. My life experience is based on a lot of knowledge from there. Not to say to start with a business early is bad. I started my business with 23 I guess. Though, just beside my career.
For trading one needs a lot of knowledge and experience and I wouldn’t expect steering into the profitable zone before 2 years of trading minimum. The profits thereafter might also be not as high as you might expect.
Consider this: If you have 10k in money, you would need 300% of roi a year to make 20k and leave your 10k in the account. That’s a tough expectation for a newbie trader.
Frankly, it’s highly probable the first couple of years you won’t get any roi, but spending money learning trading. If by some losses, some education expenses or other costs.
Even with a lot of experience I wouldn’t consider myself going full into business with this below a 100k of trading capital. It you start thinking it could be done with 50k, then well it shows already a lack of understanding. It doesn’t matter if you start with 100k or 50k IF you can trade successfully. And, if you can trade successfully, you can wait a year more to get that 100k together and don’t risking to be undercapitalized. Trading undercapitalized is a nice recipe for overtrading, which leads to busted accounts. And, if you have some bills for pressure, it doesn’t help.
I hope that helps. 
You can absolutely START trading with only a small amount of money and I strongly recommend doing just that. In order to make a living off your trading, though, you need a pretty good sized stake to be able to stay fairly conservative and not be constantly at risk of blowing up. As noted previously, you’re likely going to need a fair bit of time (read a couple years) to gain the knowledge and experience required to become a consistently successful trader.
Realitically, its unlikely that you’ll make a living from a $10K account, but by the time you’ve developed the skills, money isnt going to be an issue.
I think the 10K reccommendation was probably made to ensure that you have sufficient funds available to practice sensible position sizing and money management. Basically, you dont want a losing trade to cost you more than 2% of the account balance, so in this case, $200. An account balance of 10K would allow you to trade at $1 per pip, with a 200 pip stop loss. If your trading strategy was only using a 100 pip stop, you could acomplish the same thing with a $5000 account etc.
Of course there are brokers who allow mini, mico, nano lots, (and lower) which allow you to trade much smaller accounts,
You wont earn a living doing that, but you’ll limit losses whilst your learning, and you’ll feel some effects of having actual money on the line.
By the time you’ve developed trading skills you’ll be in a far better position to understand why you’ll probably need 100K + but thats a few years away yet
What stake you need to start to make a livable income is based on 2 things, how much you need each month to live and your winrate (assuming you are consistant) . If you realistically only need 500 bucks to live each month then I think you could swing it for 10k-15k. If you have a family a morgage and lots of expenses that’s obviously not the case, with one caveat. You may intact have a system and the skills to bring in 30% or more a month then you could support your family wity probably around 50k with capital to grow your account. Time and again I say this. Trading is very personal, it’s your system, your trading, your goals and your capital. Make a plan that works for you. A lot of members here are giving great advice but none of them can tailor a plan just for you.
It’s totally realistic but how much experience do you have with forex? It takes years to develop a good system and gather experience… Are you already trading some demo accounts and doing ok or are you a complete starter ?
Just to clarify why I think 100k is needed before going into ANY business. I mean this not only for trading. Somebody who just relies on trading needs enough buffer if something goes wrong. You need imho at least capital for 2-3 years to live from without even a trade. So, even if you just spend 20k a year, which is really a small assumption, it would need 50k itself for living 2-3 years without any stable income. So, don’t even think of putting 100k into a fx account. If that is gone you would be broke. Something what has to be avoided at all costs.
So, 100k for living AND trading then means you would have say 50k for living without worries how to pay the everyday bills and the other 50k could be used for business (trading). With 50k of a deposit and 40% roi on average per year you would have your 20k for living expenses. Albeit, 40% roi is a lot and not to make with no experience, imho. So like rhodytrader suggested, if you have no experience, start very small (with what you can afford to lose completely) and gain experience first before even THINKING to start a trading (home) business.
My youngest is 11, He wants to learn Trading, Getting him Laptop for xmas, He already watches youtube videos on Forex, I cant talk him out of it, he wants to learn…
His career choices are nile right now, and he thinks college is going to be very expensive by then… He’s 11, but he’s funny with money…
I say go for it man, why not, right?
Start with $50 or $100 with a broker that lets you trade $1.00 trade size. Oanda is one and there may be others. It’s all about percentages not account size. That way you get the feel for loosing and making real money but it won’t hurt you financially. Once you get good at it then you can grow that with compounding.
I started trading Futures at age 18 (father’s name) with $2,000 and I turned out ok :41:
If I were you I would start with options on Futures or a spread trade between contract months with mini lots.
I am not a fan of seasonal spread trades, I just turn 3 points of data into a candlestick where prev. close = open price & trade it like any other chart.
Forex is a great market when you are a seasoned professional (or your only hope if you have $400 to trade).
For monty522!
I say just get on with it. Try and fond the broker that best suits you and hit it on. The earlier u start the better u’ll be later. U need to gain experience and for that u need to trade. Find a broker that offers u the opportunity to teade with small ammount. Good traders are experienced traders. U better be aware of the fact that in order to make profit u need to invest time into it, lots of it. U’ll win and u’ll lose down the road. What matters is never to give up. And don’t expect to become rich over night. Those are extreme cases and don’t really happen from small ammounts. But over time a small ammount now can turn u into a wealthy person later.
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Monty522, welcome, I’m 18 as well. Been trading since I was 13ish though. You can do it, chances are you’ll lose the drive come your 4th or 5th month though. So I wish you the best of luck! 
Clark
Then and only then after you get over the feeling of this sucks. You delve back into it only to have two possible outcomes.
A. You say screw this and then wind up coming back to eventually
or
B. You get it and you start developing.
All in all the younger you start the better I’d say your perceptions and intake is much higher than that of a pessimistic and objective adult. Or in your case when I was your age, extreme laziness.