How big account size should you start with and how to build it up?

iamnewuser911 said:
How big of an account size say your monthly income is 5000
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It sounds like you asking about what % of an income do most people invest/trade with? This will give you an idea of the typical employed person in the U.S..

The average Fidelity 401k or IRA is contributing 8.6% of their gross income, this does not include the company matching portion.

For those in 10 years or more the avg Fidelity balance is $287k at the end of 2017. The avg for millennial's is $104k, many are just a few years into it.

I always maxed out my 401k contributions. The main thing is to be consistent, pay yourself first - no matter what. Its a lot easier than it may sound.

For an after taxed trading account for futures, options, or Forex the general rule of thumb is not to trade with more than 10% of your liquid cash net same principal applies. You want to

https://www.fidelity.com/about-fide...-retirement-saving-balances-reach-six-figures
 
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iamnewuser911 said:
Depositing each on each positive month? If so how much? 20% more? How big of an account size say your monthly income is 5000? Or if you are a student? Etc etc
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I’d stay demo testing until you’re able to get portfolio margining and/or access to risk based haircuts. It’s a completely different ballgame when you get access to that.

Now, you might get lucky on penny stocks or something volatile but if you want to be in this game for the long haul, you’ll listen.
 
You have to be honest with yourself for starters when starting and really for men this is tough, we all think we are going to be super traders quickly, like how hard can this be?
The less experience you have to generate $5,000 should be

$1,000,000 acct you can lose $500,000 and 1% interest is $5,000 for a very new trader
$5,000 acct very experienced trader who can easily make $5,000 in a month or few days.

The difference between the two are years or a decade or longer of looking at the screens, but also backtesting, keeping more and more stats, study charting. Everyone has their own ways, but you will notice the ones who do very well, opened minded and always working on getting better and well back tested trading plan.

Do the demo till you can triple it three separate times, then you should be in a safe groove to start, and in mean time save money.
 
your question varies from what product you trade but i like to hold enough money in my account for the full margin requirment which at that point if the market hits it my plan b kick in ( always have a plan B ) im just live for a few days but been trading on demo for as long as possible
 
Xela said:
after a very long time on demo,
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Hello Xela,

This question probably deserves another thread, but when did you know it was time for you to leave demo and trade cash account?

Just curious as I am still in demo.

Thanks
 
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SimpleMeLike said:
when did you know it was time for you to leave demo and trade cash account?
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When it was my 18th birthday and I was finally legally allowed to have a funded account, after waiting and practising and learning for years (I felt that I was ready before, of course, but I probably wasn't, really ... and my father had resisted all my attempts to persuade him to open a mini-account in his name with one of his debit-cards, for me to trade).

I think it's time to move from a demo account to a funded one when you're able to collate the results of 200-300 consecutive trades without any peak-to-trough drawdown bigger than 5% and making a net profit (magnitude of the profit debatable, and that's way less important than the drawdown criterion) over the 200-300 trades ... twice.

Most people either think that drawdown criterion is "too tough" (stretch it to 7% if you want), or they look at the whole thing differently and more in terms of "how much profit you can make", in which case I think they're completely misguided in their approach. :p :sneaky:

Obviously it's going to depend on your trading frequency and trade durations, though: for some types of trading this would be useless advice and you'd die waiting ... but for relatively fast-moving intraday trades, perhaps something like that?

(I actually spent 4+ years on demo, but most people certainly wouldn't be willing to do that, and in my case that was partly because I was "too young", anyway.)
 
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I beg to differ. It depends what you're in this for what you're looking to do here. I suspect this answer and those who agree with it are all coming at it from the standpoint of"continuing to trade indefinitely into the future." If that's the case then what they're saying does in fact makes sense to me.

But let's say you have a different objective....?

smallfil said:
If you learn one thing about trading, it should be risk management. Risk no more than 2% of your total trading capital. Say you have $2,000 to invest or trade. Each trade should risk no more than 2% of $2,000 or $40.00. Does not mean you will only use $40.00 per trade. When you have an entry say of $45.00 and your stop loss is at $42.00, the risk on that trade is 3.00. Divide $40.00/3= number of shares to buy for this trade. You can only buy 13 shares @45.00 for this trade. That trade will cost you $585.00 dollars of your $2,000.00 account. The reason you do this is so that, you do not blow your account up and lose that $2,000.00. You need to last, because it would take time to figure everything out! Losses are part of the game. You have to keep the losses small and your gains much, much larger! If you can do that, you will grow your account.
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