I moved from one prop firm to a different one and set up my account with only $15,000. I had about a year of full time trading under my belt, and had profitable strategies. I made over $200k off that 15 grand in the first year, and sustained my family and all my living expenses as well as paid taxes. Almost every dollar I've earned since (millions) has come from that $15,000. With prop leverage and some experience, in my opinion, you can live comfortably on a $25-50,000 account.
I don't think about leverage when I trade, at least not directly. I think about how much money I'm risking as a percentage of my account. I also consider how correlated multiple positions might be. It's safe to assume that at times I'd be highly leveraged, having 100's of thousands of dollars in play. But it's not the leverage ratio that's in use, but how you manage the risk, in dollar terms that matters. You can trade with a lot of leverage but not necessarily risk a lot of dollars.
leverage is very relevant to this discussion because different prop firms offer different leverage to different people. 15K account can mean very different thing. i think when talking about account size needed to make 100K/yr it is better to "convert" a prop account to an equivalent retail account with 4x leverage so that everyone could use the same yard stick.
Snowhite was too chicken to post his response here so I thought I would share the PM I was sent (attached) My reply: Thanks, you are dismissed. Not to mention this post by him: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=2140257#post2140257 Way to sell the bottom Snowhite!!! Apparently YOU have no clue. End of rant.
I've taken $1K to over $20k 4 times. This is the 4th time and I'm up over $50k after taking a $10k DD this week on a stupid mistake (GBP/USD short straddle). I will have this account over $100k by the end of November.