How Much Money Does a Trader Need To Start Trading?

Would anyone recommened starting with a smaller amount to find your footing and get used to the emotions of live trading, and then as long as it's all going well, increase the pot size. That's how i figured i'd start, to make some initial gains and then see from there.

You need enough money for your margin requirements first. If you plan to put on more than one position simultaneously, then you need the margin requirement for one position multiplied by the maximum number of positions you plan to put on simultaneously.

Then you need an amount equal to 3 times your maximum drawdown, defined this way: the distance between a high point in equity followed by a lowest point in equity until a new high is made.

I'd suggest you also need to be trading with money you don't mind walking into the street with and throwing into the air and walking off

this makes no sense, I don't care how much money I have I would never be throwing it to the wind. Now, if you're using your rent money to trade than that's another topic, the emotional aspects of trading are the biggest issue's and that has everything to do with the relationship we have with our money. Most people worked for it so the barrier is there and they don't want to lose it.

a YouTube video has an interview with a trader named Peter Millman and he talks about separating yourself from your money in order to become a good trader, 2 minutes later he says that the stress is so deep sometimes that he cant feel his extremities? why would he be stressed since he separated himself from his money? nobody ever separates themselves from their money, some people just cope better with the loss.

depends on timeframe of trading & percentage of s.l per trade. for example if u have a retail account with 10k $ fund & wanna risk 1 %, you should trade currencies in 5 minute cuz in this timeframe s.l is normally 5 to 10 points which is compatible with money management . for example u can not trade DAX future in 5 minute cuz 5-10 points of DAX futures would cost much more than 1 % of your account & violate money management rules. rather u can trade it in 1 minute timeframe.

with this approach u can trade almost anything above 1000 $ and u should trade on micro account

i would say start cdf trading and with an amount of £100, see this as your learning fee.. you can trade as small as 0.01 contracts, but i would suggest trade indexes and 0.2-0.5 size contracts and don't expect to be driving a Ferrari after a week..

with cdf index trading you are 99.75% leveraged, so no need at all to have a big account size for new traders, the broker will more that likely try to get you to put your maximum in but £100 would be more than fine. individual stock research is to much hard work for new investors/traders, index trading is more easier, and you get a chunk of the whole market

I think the best way to figure this out is to first learn how to trade after you picked what you would like to trade. Once you have developed a trading strategy, and tested it in a demo account, you will be able to reverse engineer the answer. You want to make sure that no individual trade or series of trades (your max estimated downdraw) would 'put you out of business'. Trading is of course just a numbers game.

Happy Trading

5-10k in £ or $

no point starting on 100 - once its gone it will end up 100 then 500 and another etc etc
unless you v'e found the holy grail which is unlikley!

save up the rest and demo to you have it, as that's the real amount of time to learn anyway
3-5yrs

trading on scared money with small stops isn't going to work for long and maybe not even for a day, and besides we can trade with thousands on demo and never loose a penny

if you don't have a driving license - you should nt be driving anyway - same with trading, no training and a good system and it will end in a crash, so no point giving the market makers and such like out hard earned money

win 150K on demo (with proper Money management and stake sizes) and then you re about ready