So the title in this thread is pretty straightforward. I simply want to know what a good amount to start trading with would be.
To clarify, I work a full-time job making only $10.50 an hour. I have a wife that stays at home and takes care of our 5-month-old son Miles.
I support all three of us on the money I make paying all the bills.
We thought that a small $250.00 would be good to start with. However, I’ve been hearing from traders like Akil Stokes and Jason Stapleton, as well as the Mentor that introduced me to Forex that $250.00 is too small. I also did some math, and based on what they are saying, 3% profit per month is what I should expect if I am trading correctly, and $250.00 on 3% is plain awful. It just doesn’t seem worth the effort I would be putting in trading every day-ish.
So the question is kind of two-fold.
Is $250.00 or say $1,000 a good amount of money to start trading with?
And with those amounts of money, is it even worth the effort that I would be putting in to trade?
I don’t want to spend most of my free time off of work investing in something that isn’t going to generate me more than $10 a week. That just seems like a waste of time.
If anyone has any examples of what kind of profit I can make, given that I trade responsibly, and tactfully with normal profit, I would appreciate that.
I really am curious as people don’t seem to be very transparent about the kind of money someone like me can make doing this. The most common response I get to a question like this is “The amount of money I make doesn’t matter”… well it kind of does because what you think is worth your time investing may be different than what I think is worth my time investing.
You should be asking yourself, "How much money am I comfortable to lose?"
That should be the first question and not how much to gain from how much money.
Remember also that in ForEx, you can lose more than what you have invested, meaning, it can go negative though not all brokers allow that you exceed more than your investment. Some automatically close your trades upon reaching a certain margin ratio.
So for now, determine how much you can invest. It should be the amount that if you lose, your lifestyle will not change any bit.
Now, you mentioned about $250 and $1000, assuming that you are comfortable to lose $250 and it is just ok, then you should start there BUT first, create a demo account and play with a balance of $250 for a week or a month.
One good thing about ForEx brokers are they offer different leverage ratio which will multiply your gain (or loss). First, I tried $50. I thought it would be easy, at first I was gaining then after few minutes, my money were burnt. So now, I am studying even further how to perfect my trades. It really requires discipline and solid strategies.
Now for your question on how much you can gain, I think, the one who said 3%don’t know much about ForEx. Because, in just few seconds, you can gain 10% of what you invested and that is because of the leverage.
I am trading $5 worth of my capital. Small right? but for 1pip, it gives me $1 gain or $1 loss. and in 5 minutes, it plays around 3 to 4 pips, so you expect you can gain $3 or $4 per 5 minutes, that is if you are good trader. By the way, I am talking about EUR/USD. Though my capital is not only $5, I often leave 20-25 times the amount I am trading, since my broker automatically close my trades if I reach almost $0 in my account. I trust my indicators and strategies so I need more capital for me to be flexible with the price movement.
So for $250, then maybe you can trade up to $15 for a 1:2000 leverage ratio and be able to get $3 per pips then you can set a goal of 5-10 pips a day which can give you $15 - $30 a day. That is easy as long as you practice. Then earn $250 gain then withdraw, that will give you back what you invested. You are now in break-even, whatever happens, you are playing with the money you gained.
With that, plan what you will do with the gain, you can put your profit target to 10 pips a day so that will give you around 50 pips a day if you trade 5 days a week then decide whether you withdraw half of the amount then invest the other half and in a month or so, you will be trading more than a thousand dollar which may give you more than what you earn from your full time job.
So for now,
You need to determine how much you can lose.
What broker to use.
What strategies and indicators to use.
What trading hours.
In our local Stock Market, I can just buy stocks for $1000 then leave it then sell after a year or so. Then I maybe at gain of 30% or more but in ForEx, if I buy $1000 worth of currency, I need to monitor it and can’t take away my eyes even for a second then sell after few minutes or after a day which may yield to 20 pips, 50 pips, 100 pips, 200 pips, depending on the market.
Holy cow, some of the things you said here are brilliant! Or seemingly so, at least.
I’ve been taking lots of notes, mostly of the stuff you learn in the School of Pipsology and I’m definitely taking notes of this stuff here…
I’m only going to be investing an amount that my wife and I agree upon. It’s only going to be money that we are willing to lose. So I’m good there, so far.
I guess after reading your post here, it makes a little more sense why it would be more [I]practical[/I] to start with $250.00. However, most other professional traders I’ve talked with have been saying that it’s too small of an amount to make any real profit. That being said, I wouldn’t mind making $20 - $30 a day. If I can make that much money starting off with $250 - Then HECK YEAH, I’m in!
But what you’re saying seems to contradict so many others who keep saying that 3%-4% profit is the only amount that is realistic. I don’t know what is correct. I’m so noob, I’m still covered in placenta.
$50.00!? How the heck could you gain anything at all from $50.00? I suppose if you were lucky, you could get it up there lol… Hmm scratches head, did you start with a larger amount the next time around?
Like I mentioned before, what you’re saying here seems to contradict what I’ve been hearing. I’m just curious where people are getting these figures from. Perhaps the people saying you can only realistically gain 3% on average are the people who believe that you need to be extra cautious and only trade smaller lots? Who knows…
And this is the part that sounded really brilliant to me. I hadn’t thought of investing $250.00 and then when I have profited $250.00, withdrawn my initial investment, and it’s as if I invested nothing and gained from it. Sounds pretty sweet… In theory. Hopefully that’s something I can accomplish.
So this touches on my second question. If it only takes me about a year to get start trading $1,000.00 from $250.00 and it makes me more money than my job at $10.50/hour, then this really is worth investing in. After that, if I am consistent, I will be making pretty good money that is nothing to shake a stick at.
$250 is definitely too small to be trading with for profits, but for the sake of learning it is great. Most people can’t give you an answer on how much money to expect because it highly varies - trading isn’t like learning to ride the bike where once the training wheels come off you’re set. It’s a continuous process and you’re always improving if you can stick to it.
I just got done with the Babypips School not more than two weeks ago. I’m not sure what kind of experience you have, but I’m personally aiming for 1%+/day on a $1000 account. However I’m constantly learning new things every day, so having a target this early isn’t very useful. That being said, 1% every day ($10) might seem like nothing, but it really does add up over compounding (~40K after 1 year, 1.4 M after 2 years).
In other words, no one besides yourself can tell you how much profit you can make.
The learning curve for Forex trading is 2 to 3 years.
A minimum of 2 years even if you are under the tutelage of the best mentor in the forex community.
The TIME and effort required to learn Forex trading is enormous.
Now, back to your million dollar question.
“what is a good amount to start trading with?”
The answer is ZERO dollars. You should continue your day job, and work very hard to make a livelihood for your family.Take care of your family well. Save up if you are able to. If for some reasons that you are unable to save up extra cash for your Forex trading live account. Its okay. It doesn’t matter. I will explain why at the end of my post.
Why zero dollars? You don’t jump into trading with a live account when you have no DEMO account result to demonstrate that you are a profitable trader. If you do that. I personally swear by it that you will lose big time! Making ends meet seems hard enough for you and your family. When your living environment is harsh. Its even more difficult to trade, because you can’t afford to fail. The stress is tremendous! There is no way a person can succeed in trading when they are under such kind of pressure.
So how to succeed? You should create a DEMO account with a reliable broker that offers you a leverage of at least 1:200. I say 1:200 because i think you will need it. Small time trader requires larger leverage than a big time trader. A big time trader can have a big account and margin is irrelevant to them. Whereas a small time trader with a smaller account requires more leverage so as to have enough margin for drawdown and to make money faster. However, leverage is still a double edge sword.
My recommendation for YOUR Demo account are as follow,
Create a Micro lot size trading account; Capital amount $5,000 .
Lot amount to enter per trade : 0.01 lot (assuming standard lot size is 100,000units)
Leverage 1:200
You must adopt a conservative mindset and trade in such a way that your initial capital amount cannot be depleted by 75% even after making 100 trades.
When you have acquired good track records on your DEMO account to show people that you are a profitable trader. People will be swarming to you for your advice. You can teach and amass extra money to save up in preparation for your live account opening. There may even be benefactor to help you out.
Main thing is you must provide evidence that you are a profitable trader on DEMO account first.
By the way, I don’t trust broker that offers more than 1:200 leverage. Its ridiculous.
This reply started out quite well, then we got this load of nonsense
Please ignore this, it’s terrible advice. Murasakifuyu, if you’re really doing this perhaps you could show us your myfxbook to verify it.
Ideasonscribe, sorry to dampen your enthusiasm but it is 90-95% likely that you will lose your money.
If you study at the free school here and read thru all the threads you will better understand the pitfalls in fx and why it is so difficult.
If you study hard, develop a sound trading plan, have good money management skills, good control of your emotions, and are lucky enough to avoid the unexpected events that ruin even the best trading plans, then you might, just might, make a small profit that allows you to grow your account over years.
I wish you the very best of luck in your trading
This is my sub-account on my demo account. This is different from my real trading account. Here I practice my new strategies until I perfect them then apply on my real trading account.
I use 3 indicators here and set my TP at 1-2 pips most of the time if I see indicators will just give me small movements and 10pips if I see it will go on big movement. I played on the 1 minute candle with $50 capital and 1:2000 leverage ratio.
Whether you use a risky strategy or conservative strategy, it is still depends on your risk management.
Instead of posting a screenshot if a single days demo account trading, why dont you post a link to your myfxbook for your live account, after all its real money that your giving “advice” on.
By the way, using 1:2000 leverage is suicidal and not even permitted in some countries
Akil Stokes and Jason Stapleton are NOT professional traders. They are professional [U]salesmen[/U]. The difference between those 2 categories are as big as between moon and sun. Professional traders have track-records, like these guys here Manager Rankings
In the beginning your goal should be learning, not earning money. When people go to law or medical school, they first put in the time and the tuition money, and only after that can they think of making money
I don’t watch Akil and Jason for their sales pitches. The actual material that I watch by them that has educational value for new traders like myself has very little to no sales pitches about their paid services. Right now, I don’t need to be finding the most professional obscure traders and trying to get their attention for some insider tips and tricks.
I just casually watch a few videos by some casual traders like Akil or Jason. Based on your labeling of them, I assume you disagree with their strategies or simply find them useless?
In any case, I don’t really care if they are only doing this to make more money off of viewers and subscribers. I am just taking what information they freely are posting on YouTube and just taking notes.
I have no intention of buying any of their services. I am just milking the free stuff they have to get some understanding of very basic stuff.
I have a very rational reason for wanting to know if forex trading is worth my time and financial investment. I’m sorry, but this second critique of yours is absolutely unfounded. Money is exactly why I would be doing this, so I see no reason to ignore that aspect or just shut up and “learn”. I am studying, researching and going through the School of Pipsology every day for hours a day. I sit at a computer desk in a cubicle at work with access to the internet and hours of down time every day. I don’t just sit there sulking about the amount of money I can or cannot make, searching for that one answer. I am absolutely focused on learning, but in the meantime, excuse me if I am concerned if I am wasting my time with all of this.
You really hit a nerve with that one.
I really do wish people would stop giving me the same answer regarding the financial aspect.
My question can basically be summed up like this:
If I take $1,000.00 into the forex market - What is [I]reasonably[/I] possible? The key word is “[I]reasonably[/I]”. I just want some estimations, I don’t even need exact figures.
I want to know something like this because my wife sees me at my desk studying this stuff and she is really worried that I am wasting our time with this. She and I both wonder if the little amount of capital we would be investing is something that can possibly help us financially, or just give us a couple dollars here and there after working my ass off.
If I were to go to college to be a doctor, money would certainly be on my mind. I would certainly want to know that all that studying I am doing is eventually going to LITERALLY pay off.
Well, I’ll only be trading a demo account for the first while until I’ve got a good feel for placing trades, stop losses and how the market works. Then I’ll be investing somewhere around $250.00 of Income Tax that we’re willing to “splurge”.
I’m gonna check out that link, thank you!
Thank you all for your input. I am taking notes on the substance and links you guys are posting.
Wish I could respond to everyone right now but I don’t have a lot of time right now. Perhaps later.
Get an Oanda account, and throw in $20. If your using MT4, You need $50 at least.
There is NO reason to start with $10,000… That number is for the long haul, at 5% gain a year, easy money.
Demo is cool, it keeps you inline. I trade both demo and Real at the same time.
Oanda you can trade very small increments which is great for a new trader. At the end of the day, a pip is a pip. ANd thats all you need to focus on, is that PIP, not the money.
Waiting on the $250 income tax money, tells me you have no money to burn, so dont do it. That gives you 4.5 months to learn and chip away with real money on a super small scale, but also learn with real, hard earned cash.
$10,000 at 1% a day will give you $500 profit a week, and thats what alot would be happy with, but we dont have that luxury, so we have to take the hard, dirty, dusty, potholed road to make it…
I hate to sound like a broken record, but you simply cannot estimate what someone else can make in the forex market. I know you have probably heard it over and over, but it all comes down to individual skill, strategies, and tolerance to a harsh learning curve.
If you want to look at statistics, 90% of traders lose money. If you want anecdotal evidence, I’m making about 1%/day. The only way to know how much you can potentially make (and whether it’s worth your time) is by opening up a Demo account and seeing how well you fare personally.
Don’t bother putting in $250 if your goal is to make money - demo trade for awhile and if you want to continue then go for at least $1000. I don’t know if you play Poker, but you never go in to a table with the Minimum Buy-in simply because the laws of probability will kick in no matter how good you are.
If you look at that link, you’ll see what actual professional traders have been making, going back decades. An annual average would be around 20%…but this comprises an interval of returns ranging from high double digit returns years to down years. No one can say in advance what you’re going to make next year.
As to Akil and Stapleton… the fear I have regarding guys selling trading related stuff and posing as professional traders, but with no proof whatsoever, is that I’m going to be lead astray. If they really were proficient at trading, they would show it, because it would only help their business.
We will be getting an estimate of nearly $7,000.00 in our upcoming income tax return. All of which is extra money. We can throw away $250.00 at that time, no problem. Heck we can throw $1,000.00 away without hurting at all.
I’m throwing these figures out there because I am not lying - I really can do without this money… so I want to trade with it.
I looked at the link (I also saved it in my portfolio) and I didn’t understand what I was looking at.
It doesn’t help me right now since I’m at the very basic level of understanding.
Also it was so much information all over the place. I won’t be able to go through any of that until I’m more advanced in my education.
As far as Akil and Jason, of all their videos I’ve been watching, they have been trading the exact same things I’m learning about in the Pips School. I am watching them to see people actually put what I’m learning into practice. I am very visual, so I am going to go to videos regardless of what anyone says. Otherwise, I will lose interest if I go to a website like the one you linked full of garbled walls of text. If Akil and Jason are trying to mislead me, they don’t seem to be doing such a great job of it since their stuff is pretty elementary so far.
But don’t think your caution goes unnoticed. I do appreciate the concern.
Oh I see now! Well… I’ll have to take that up with the wifey and see what she says. If she is ok with it, then I don’t see why not just throw twenty bucks in there and mess around. Actually doesn’t sound like a bad idea. That way I could apply what I am learning right now to some real money and real trading. Why not!
Ideaonscribe
maybe u can try this
Establish your trading rules
Do 20 demo trade.
Check your winrate
Go live if winrate 75%
Go for another 20 trade on live
Then another 20 trade
Then another 20
20 by 20 u evaluate yourself
At any point when live acc winrate become less than 75% per 20 trade. Go back to demo 20 trade and when u get 75% winrate on demo again.Return to live.
My rationale for going back to demo when winrate go below 75% per 20 trade is this… market conditions have changed. You need to be able to adapt to the new market conditions and quickly change strategy to cope with the immediate market conditions. Most people are too rigid to adapt… be flexible. Things change now and then , nothing remain the same indefinitely. You are the holy grail not the strategy.
It is also not wise to trade live when your confidence are low. Execution wise, you may not be as adept as before.
