It seems like there are alot of traders out there trying to start small and grow it to a sizable account. Alot of experienced traders seem to say that a $40,000 account to begin with might be a good idea which is fine but if you don't have it, well ya' gotta start somewhere. My question is this: Experienced Traders: If your trading account was wiped out and all you had was $2,000, could you make money on it? Any particular strategies? Just curious.
you sure can make money on a $2000 account,but you need a part time job to support yourself at the same time.
I think we can exclude all stock trading - < $ 25K allows no day trading - with "only" $2k you cannot take the drawbacks for overnight trading So it comes to futures, options or forex I think in futures it will be very hard (due to your risk exposure) With opions I have not much experience...... Forex might work to build your acct.
It is very difficult to make money when you can only buy 25 or 50 shares of something. You need it to go up $1 or $2 just to make $50 or $100. With the risk of holding for a couple of days while you wait for those moves, you are facing a daunting task. You should save up until you have $8000 or $10000.
If you're trading stocks, I think it will be very difficult. You can do it with futures though since you have more leverage. -FastTrader
In Futures, your best bet is probably buying options.. Your risk is limited and they are not that expensive to get into. Or Day trade the E-Mini S&P ..
I think the S&P e-mini might be too expensive to trade...by that I mean if he uses a 4 pt stop-loss, that's $200 (10% of his acct). I would start with something that has a smaller tick size like the YM ($5 per point), so even a 10 pt trailing stop is only $50 risk. -FastTrader