How much money do I NEED to start?

Hello all. I'm new to trading but I'm very interested and want to learn and find out if it's something I could be good at. I'm wondering if it would even be worth trying to start day trading with only $200 (with $4.95 commission on each trade). If I had to guess, honestly, I'd guess that it would be next to impossible to make a profit with such a small investment. Should I even try with this amount of money or, if not, how much should I have in my account before I start trading?

$10,000, at minimum. In the meantime, you can study the market, work on a trading plan, and practice.

thats a little high personally - you can start with less than that

and you can certainly practice in the meantime ....use demo's and perfect that trading system before you risk real $$$....remember you will always struggle even with a good demo performance ..........the real world is much much harder

N

Can, yes. Should, no.

Try spread betting, trade demo for a short period then move to real money and you will find it becomes a different game altogether.

You will almost certainly blow up your first account, if you start with £500 and trade to make say 20 per day it makes it real, if you screw up you only loose £500, you can blow it 2 or three times and will learn a hell of a lot in the meantime. If you double it then you just may be on your way....

I have a friend who started with 70K, he blew it in three months, fortunately 70k whilst painful for him wasn't the end of the world, but when you have a 70k account you are not interested in making £100..... Fact is he didnt know what he was doing and its an expensive environment to learn a new set of skills in..

Trading Demo other than in the very early stages is a waste of time thi IMO

Good luck

Chalky

interesting why $10,000 ? ...whats wrong with micro accounts ?

N

Consider the type of trader they attract: underfunded, ill-equipped, poorly-educated, unprepared. Hard cheese, but there it is.

Poorly educated and unprepared!

Id say it was the clever & prepared person that traded with a very small amount of money when it is clear he doesn't have much trading experience, and considering the fact that most new traders blow their accounts up it is therefore odds on that the first account will get wasted.

Your advice is for fools and their money, and we know where that ends....