I realise the question doesn’t have a simple answer of course as there are too many variables.
But before I invest a LOT of time in learning and practising Forex trading (at least 6 months I am planning), I want to make sure that my expectations of the potential earnings are in line with the real experience of all you seasoned traders?
So I need your help to set me straight please…
My goal is to be able to maintain my lifestyle of earnings around $USD250k/year while being able to work from a home-office location rather than the city; my current business is not in the financial sector in case you are wondering - but you guessed that
So if I am fortunate enough to be able to learn the basics to trade Forex, get through my 6 month trial and find it is something I can both do and enjoy, then what sort of fund size do I need to start with to achieve a first year profit of $USD250k?
Now before I get flamed to death, I realise that there is no formula to derive this and I realise that people can be lucky or unlucky and there is a huge dependency upon one’s attitude to risk and individual experience and knowledge of the market, so I am asking a very general question about whether it is feasible with a balanced approach to risk (not too conservative, but not crazy) to generate this amount of income annually and what sort of fund one would need to start with 12 months earlier in order to have a good chance of hitting this goal?
Please excuse my newbie ignorance, and treat me kindly…
250K per year from the start? Man, that’s way too ambitious goal for a newbie. Trading ain’t easy business, it takes time to master…In the meantime, have you considered investing in companies which pay big dividends? While there are risks, you receive income while doing nothing more than making some research to choose what you consider to be the best picks.
I agree, 250K on the first year of trading is not very realistic, however, I would like to know more about that “receiving income while doing nothing more than making some research to choose what you consider to be the best picks” deal.
1st year sounds improbable. 2nd year seems more reasonable. i’m a n00b, but even with simple math you can see how things could work out…
assuming you can increase your capital by 1% on average a day, which i think is a very reasonable and conservative target (PLEASE someone correct me if i’m wrong on this because if this is wrong the rest is crap)
with a starting capital of $1000 trading micro lots, after 300 days you’ll have $19593.
after another 300 days you’ll have $387,706.
Depends entirely on what method you use – what kind of stop losses (amount risked per trade) and average profits on winning trades.
Obviously it all starts with you actually being good enough to win consistently in the first place. If you can do that, you could theoretically go from $1000 to $1 million or more in a year.
Many successful traders use methods that set around a 20-40 pip stop loss per trade. The average win is 70-200 pips. So in other words, if you risked 3% per trade – a 20-40 pip stop worked out to 3% of your account then a winning trade could mean a 9-15% increase on your account, and you could get several of those a week.
Most likely, though, it is not realistic to expect to be consistently successful that soon in your forex career.
SRQ.UN - Scott’s Real Estate Investment Trust - Google Finance (look at the monthly distribution news and make numbers…at this share price it’s a 22% yield)
Lovely, right? The only bad thing I see is that two of them have already taken off, although they give neat yields. Picking them near the bottom and holding 'em for a few years would have resulted in insane returns.
