Fellow Forum Members, Every Forex book I have read insists that a Standard trading account should not be setup with nothing less than $100,000. However, on the other side of the spectrum, I have also heard that some traders have been successful at making a $25,000 initial investment grow to $250,000 in one year's time. In my case all of the seed money I can afford is $25,000. I have been practicing with demo accounts and live mini accounts for close to a year now and I have about a 80% success rate. I want to move up to a Standard Account now. My plan is to just shoot for 100 Pips a week which is all I need to survive on and also put some money away for a rainy day. I would appreciate hearing stories of success or ruin from traders out there who started out with a $25,000 Standard Account. My goal is simple. I just want to prove to myself that I'm not being totally wreckless by electing to start out with a $25,000 Standard account. Any advice will be greatly appreciated, because it's weighing heavy on my mind that I'm setting myself up for failure with a $25K Standard Account eventhough my trading journal tells me to go for it. Thanks in advance to all.
the best way is to fund it with 25000 on demo and try out your strategy, if it works for several month then fund it with a 1000 dollars and play minilots
It is better to try out your ideas when you have several hundred or several thousands of dollars on the line. When you risk 100K and lose for most people it is a severe and perhaps irreversible blow to their financial health.
I started an experiment this year with $29. It is now close to $100. What they write is bullshit, as it depends on minimum size you can trade. Once it reaches $100, I plan to possibly start a thread so to show progress for people as people can afford to start with $100 to learn. If you never traded live, I would stay to play it real safe. If I were you I would start even smaller, and add only when I make money. Make sure you have blown out some accounts with one $100 only. Watch me I am trading the bitch right now. (EUR/USD).
The account balance doesn't mean a thing, it's in the money management. The question is: what is the frequency of your signal, the expectation per trade, and your allocation per trade. Remember all strategies (no matter how good) always draw down. They momentarily will go out of sync with the market. If you get unlucky and begin your trading close to one of these events, you must be able to weather the drawdown, else blow out. But I can say without any hesitation that if that is all the money you can put together, the most you should be trading is a $2500 account. You never trade with money that is meaningful, else emotions will interfere. No matter what you do, trade your system on a mirror platform on a demo account. This way if the broker does something funny, you will know immediately. With a $25000 account, and sizable positions, you are a sizable target. Wishing you all the luck. The longer you last, the more profitable you will become. Be defensive, and survive. Trader 5of7 @ TheCollectiveFX.com
I agree with you but you seem to contradict yourself by going on to tell him to trade a $2500 account. And I disagree with this notion that trading with money you can't afford to lose is lunacy. Who goes to a bank to get a small business loan with the mindset that "this is money I can afford to lose"? The idea is to be successful and earn a profit. Starting with the mindset that I'm willing to fail isn't the best way to promote success, but that's just me. I do agree that MM is the holy grail. If you can master this then the amount of capital you have will become very powerful when coupled with the leverage. If you feel you haven't mastered it yet, start with 25K in a demo and trade until you can achieve your goals.
You are quite correct, sorry for the confusion. If all you have is 25,000 then the rule of thumb is to allocate no more than 10% towards aggressive strategies such as leveraged investments. But it's just a rule of thumb, and all are welcome to disregard it. Trader 5of7 @ The************