Trading a $3000 Account

I’m curious to know if I can be successful in trading $3000 or am I vulnerable with such an account, and how many positions can I trade at a time?

One of my accounts has about that much in it and I use it to try to catch big moves during big data and that's all. I set up boxes ready to trade and a friend does the clicking for me while my hands are free to click in another account. Maximise your gains when its a one way market and get a friend to come along and help!!!

Maybe you should look at trading a system, which triggers often but with smaller profit targets. Like executing a good trade, capture a minimum of 10-20pips and call it a day. According to www.forextradersa.com a professional training site, you should not risk more than 5% of your start-up capital, which does make sense since it helps put a solid floor under the amount of damage the market can do to your account.
The way I understand it is, say for e.g. you had to enter the market with three lots and a stop equaling $3000, you would be risking your $3000 on one single trade, yet on 3% to 5% risk on your margin say a $125 loss, would leave you with $2875 and enough money to continue trading.

if you trade with Oanada (sp?), you can trade in fractional lots. That way, you can trade only the fraction for which your money management rules are satisfied.

For example, you have $3000, and for a given signal you can risk 2%, ie, $60. Now suppose, you are using a system that generates a possible stop loss level of 6 pips. In this case, you will put on a contract size where 6 pips will equal to $60.

Hope this helps.

Adele, a mini account is better with that amount of money.

A normal account on 3000 grand can cause a serious loss if a 100pip stop is struck(each pip is $10, varies on currency).

3 positions of $1000 margin can be opened (this may vary on the currency).

On a mini of that amount 30 positions using $100 margin can be opened (buck a pip, typical margin amount for FXCM at least though they require $200 margin for interest bearing positions and also $50 margin positions as well.

I have done something similar--you can take the 2500 and put it into a mini account (FXCM , Gain, any of those) then place 500 into an Oanda account (break it down to 2 accounts of 250 if you want).

A mini may not get you rich overnight on a good trade like a "Maxi" but it will keep you in the game if a reversal hits.

The plan is to develop serious strategies in Oanda without losing the shirt and later apply it to the mini and follow it along with Oanda where you can latersee easily on their charts where the entries and stoplosses occured. Oanda allows fractional trades. Also unproven or experimental strategies can be done on Oanda and if it fails, its not big bucks especially if you have the leverage turned down and are trading 1% of your account.

There are differences here and there where I've taken profit/stopped out on FXCM limit orders it did not trigger in Oanda and the reverse is sometimes true but overall it follows and gives you a idea of what is actually happening.

I suppose one could do it on a demo but real money causes me to pay attention more closely plus I think game/demo accounts don't always reflect real "combat" conditions.

Mini can almost be like demo if you're not carefully. I mean it takes too much risk away and stops being real. About 6 months ago I turned an amount of about 50 bucks into over 300 bucks in less than a month, trading just 50 cents a point. My system was just using hunches and feel coupled with fibo and levels from the forex news. I'm using that exact system now in another account which started with about $5000 3 months ago and it's only up around 45%. A huge difference especially since there's no difference in system only sums used.

golden rule of forex traders: it doesn matter how much deposit you have, dont risk more than 1% of your deposit in each position you enter.

MM is unique for any amount of deposit

good luck

It depends what you consider successful. If you want to generate 10 grand a month on that account then it is unlikely to happen. However if your goal is more sort of 200-500 per month, then that is more than possible.

But as others have said you should be trading a mini account with that sort of capital.

What is successful? What do you mean exactly?! If being successful is increasing the size of your account over time then yes, if it earning a living with your 3k account then no.

This thread is from August 2004! lol

It was Adele's one and only post. She's a pretty good singer now. Forex trading took a back seat.

LMAO...
I heeaard that she's married now..that she settled down...

Is she? That's nice.

Because the last thing I heard her say was "should I give up or should I just keep chasin' pavements, even if it leads nowhere, ohhhh oh".

LOL

Funny. I posted too

I started with $2000 using renko charts turned it into $4500.. now im trying to find a stable EA with consistent returns because manual trading has stressed me out to much..