You know, I don't know how other people feel about it, but I started with a $5k account exactly 1 year ago, almost to the day.
I was working for decent money 40 hours a week, and my hours were flexible in the morning so I had time to watch the market and trade the morning session and sometimes the afternoon (I'm on the west coast).
I did ok for the first month trading NQ...I knew very, very little, but I was net profitable. At the end of August, the volatility dropped off and the market dried up. I had been trading using Bollinger bands and breakouts, and needed the big trends to survive...the newly-discovered chop ate my confidence, and eventually I got in to a viscious spiral for 3 days...overtrading, revenge trading, etc, and shed $1500 of my account just like that. I was *shocked*.
Of course, I was very shaken as my account was now a bit above $3500 and I had thought I was making some progress! I decided to take a few weeks off, write a simulator, and figure out what had changed. Those tasks accomplished (at least the simulator), I came back to the market a month later with the simulator. I kept mixing simulated trades and real trades, neither of which proved to be anything but b/e...and I was being soooo cautious that it wasn't making any sizable impact either way, though the stops were adding up because I was too chicken to go for the trend...I was too happy with +4. I studied new techniques, I changed instruments, I tried various things. I felt like I was making tremendous progress in terms of my market knowledge, but my trading was b/e.
Circumstances with my job changed, and I was no longer going to be able to have trading hours. So I pulled some money out of a property I owned to cover my living expenses and dedicate myself for at least a few months of interruption-free work on trading. I thought 6 months was *alot* of time and that there was a good chance that, with a sufficient amount of work, I would get to my fairly lofty goal of $4k/month. If not, I'd just get a job.
All this while my now-$3500 account was holding basically steady with a slight downtrend. February was pretty damn good, but then March was bad with some experimentation with options in an attempt to better manage risk (hah!) and my account was < $3k now and approaching the $2k limit at IB. My 6 months came up and I had to return to a job in May. I drained my account to think about things and to back myself up in case the job search took too long. Times aren't stellar up here in the Pac NW, though it worked out ok.
So here I am...I started with a $5k account, and I drained it to ~$2k. In a year, I learned TONS about the market and trading, and even more about myself. I met alot of great people and learned a bit about how the finance world operates. I got to ski all winter too.
Financially, I'm not in all that different a position than I was when I started this process, minus the $3k.
Could I have made it to my $4k/month goal with a $5k account? I certainly thought so when I started...it was just a matter of time in my opinion...the magic of compounding. But now I am of the opinion that what matters is alot more than just the size of the account to begin with and how hard you work at it, as many here suppose. Had I been able to find another job with more appropriate hours, I would have probably been less concerned with the losses in my account...that would have been psychologically very helpful. If the money feels important to you, that's a big block. Towards the end of the 6 months I took off, when I was looking at getting a job again in this brutal economy, you can bet I was in *no* position to trade. The ~$2k I had left would have covered my expenses for a month...no way I could take trades on that.
But now I have a job, so the money is less of an issue...I am trying forex, because the trends play themselves out over a longer period, the overhead is low (only spread, no commission), and the risk with a mini account is more appropriately scaled (my stops are about 50% the $ size of my typical ES stops). And a $500 account is appropriate in this case. It's worth considering, though I am not sure that the forex markets are the best to learn on because they seem technically "fuzzy" on anything but a daily chart. Another good aspect is that I can easily come up with another $500 to fund if it runs dry (and the minimum to open a position is $50).
Either way, I guess the point I am trying to make is that it's not so much the size of the account, but how you feel about that money and how you will handle things if they don't happen to go your way right off. As you are learning how to trade, life is going on too...it's hard to put a time limit on how long it will take to be successful, if ever, at this.
Hope this realistic view of one person's ongoing progress is helpful to anyone interested. Check back in with me in 6 months...
