What it sounds like is you are looking for a way to make ends meet. Desperation and low capital make brokers rich. It sounds like you need a career change. If you can’t put up 5k, when you blow out, what headspace will you be in? Will you care? If you remotely care about the dollars you put into a broker you are playing a losers game. Just heed my advice. I don’t know your life right now. Regardless, find a new job, a second job, or whatever it takes to put together 5-10k of money you could lose tomorrow and not lose your mind over. If you can’t accomplish this, you cannot be a good speculator. Disconnection from the value of your capital is critical to placing trades as a speculator. There are far easier ways to make ends meet my friend.
I dont need to worry about living expenses, I dont have much savings and I am doing this to practice because theres no point in my risking much money when I know I am likely to lose. ATM I am trading with an ECN broker with fx but I am just not going to make money in a choppy market I know this from experience I tend to push things and try to trade the chop which loses me money. My tendency is to overtrade. With stocks I want to test a new approach which is just whizzing through lots of charts and picking ones that have a clear pattern I can trade, putting my mental energy into that instead of feeling agitated with markets are zzzing. Would 5k be the absolute minimum to trade? Whats the kind of minimum $ I can risk per trade in shares. Usually there is a ticket fee of around $7 per trade, so I need to be risking a least $50 per trade I guess otherwise the ticket fee is really skewing the R/R.
$200 is really low, However If you are in the US I know of 2 brokers that give you a free stock up to $1,000 just for 5 min sign up. They also both have free commissions. One also has free paper trading. This can help you get started for sure since its free commissions and can add more $ to your portfolio PM me if interested
I have narrowed down brokers to 3 - cmc markets, plus 500 and markets.com. Plus 500 gives 20:1 leverage on stock CFDs, markets.com gives 10:1, not sure with CMC and it seems they charge $7 per trade I am double checking. I like the markets.com trader more but stock leverage is more important for me so now I am leaning towards plus 500 unless CMC can offer better leverage. Reputation wise I believe all three are listed stocks and regulated, and all have decent reviews from independent sites, CMC has the lowest ratings of all three.
Plus 500 saying 5:1 for cfd shares. Just trade US30/ym at $1 per pt, some wicked easy 100pt moves into the close recently, $100 in 20mins. Mich easier than stock trading longer term.