That's like asking "how much is a car"? Answer, it varies, so go to each firm that you're interested in and check out their website....
The cheapest Forex brokers I found up to now are FX Open and FX Club. FX Open has Metatrader4 trading platform and slightly better spreads. Although it's a little more difficult to fund the account (need to do bank wire). FX Club has an "OK" (ClassicFX trading platform) and an "Alice in Wonderland" childish platform (ExpressFX). I like the book "Forex Patterns and Probabilities" by Ed Ponsi for Forex. Swing trading (several days to several weeks) using long term QQQQ options might be a way to short term trade the stock markets. I think thinkorswim.com (in the US or Questrade in Canada) have a low account minimum for options. QQQQ options has a lower bid/ask spread. Also, long term options have less time decay if you want to hold them for several months. Also, the implied volatility (you can check this out on the option calculator on the CBOE website) are lower which means less chance of a "volatility implosion" (it can be dangerous for example to buy a put option on an individual company stock right after disasterous news because the implied volatilities on the options will likely be sky-high which will make it much more difficult to turn a profit, including the typical large bid/ask spreads on options on individual stocks). I can tell you I've been trying to develop a method to trade the markets for about 18 months now and am not done yet but can tell you if you AIM FOR EITHER large profit targets and small losses on Forex OR AIM FOR large profit targets with huge stops (a stop loss order is an order where you want to cut your losses, in other words a huge stop would be a price far away from your entry point) with long term QQQQ options, I think you'll likely to increase your chances. Trying to aim for a change in direction instead of jumping in the middle of a large wave and also once you're in the middle of a large wave, trading with the trend rather than against it will increase your odds. And obviously, risking a small amount of money as a beginner will reduce your chances of losing larger amounts of money. There, good luck. (Haha, lots of work has produced a lot of ideas. I think you should print this out and put it on your fridge.)