200:1 or 100:1 ?

I'm ready to go live at the beginning of the year. FXCM offers both 200;1 and 100:1 mini accounts, I'm inclined to go w/ 200:1 as I can't think of any drawbacks. Can anyone w/ experience tell me what possible negatives there might be w/ 200:1?

This solely depends on the account size your starting with.

Good Luck

In the beginer section is a sticky called "Information for beginners." It has the answers in the MM posts.

Well, I have read through that thread, my biggest question I guess is related to trading position, and it is not really addressed there.

I will start my account w/ $3000 and only trade 1 lot, because I only want to risk 1% per trade due to being a beginner(as far as live trading goes). If I open a 200:1 mini acct, will that effectively change it so that 1 lot(1% of acct w/ a 30 stop) actually becomes 2%? You might be able to tell that I'm not a math whiz.

It's exactly the same, the difference will be the margin available, while in a 200:1 account you only need $500 available to buy a lot, in a 100:1 account you need $1,000 ; available means that the money is not being used in other open position.

If in a certain position, you plan your stop loss of let's say, 25 pips, 25 x $10 per pip = $250 risked in the position, that is far more than the risk you pretend, so, if you plan to open an account with $3,000 I recomend you open a mini and trade mini lots ($1 per pip).

Beginners like the higher leverage.

Personally, just dont blow your $5K account trading 10 standard lots.

In my book, leverage has nothing to do with risk. Risk is associated with the number of lots you trade. Only the mathematically challenged who flanked Elementary Math, will keep telling you that 500:1 is 5x riskier than 100:1.

1 Lot on 500:1 will have same risk as 1 lot on 100:1.
Nail that through your heads.

I recommend that you trade 1 mini lot per $1K and SL of no more than 100 pips or $100 risk.

At this point, you should consider looking for "reputable" brokers! That will give you money when you request for withdrawal.

100:1 leverage is plenty for most trading strategies!
I have 100:1 on my main account and rarely use more than 5% of available margin at any one time.

spread DOESNOT matter you can chose to trade with 1000:1 or you can chose to trade with 1:50. what matters is what amount of capital you risk per trade.and it should be 2%