Full time trading- capital requirements

[Parttimer]

Hi All, just a quick open ended question. What would the general view of the forum as to what would be an acceptable minimum capital balance to become a full time trader (1 man operation). Thanks

[mullet_fish]

How long is a piece of string........so many factors...especially if you have never been a trader before? My advice would be to start very small....learn the hard knocks without going broke....this might take up to two years. As your confidence, knowledge and success improves so can your trading funds. There are some good plans on "justonelap.co.za" ...be careful as the pros will wipe you out when you are a rookie.!

[Werner_1]

I think the more capital the better, then you require only small moves to make your monthly required income, if the capital is too low you need to make more trades that have a very high profit level which could be more challenging. if you have a huge capital base you only need a much smaller gain to achieve your goal of whatever you want to take home each month.

[orange68]

full time has no answer or number. start with what you have part time(with risk management) keep increasing the capital as you make profits...doing so helps you learn as well... and when you feel its enough increase your trading and maintain your discipline/ risk management ... and then take advantage of daily opportunities... labeling yourself as "full time trader" does have expectations attached to it ...

[Rams]

the minimum would be R100 000, for derivative trading(CFDs/Futures).There is no maximum...

[SimonPB]

R100k to be risk efficient ..
three or four times annual living expenses to live off it ..

[WES]

Yeah I agree 100 %, if you are a rookie, you can't compete with the pros....you like canonfodder for them.

[Rams]

no, no ,no....there is no such thing as pros and rookies...its one big market you are trading and there a a million different systems trading in a multitude of time frames...a single "pro trader" does not see a "rookie trader" and then comes after you...there are buyers and sellers...

[prancing_horse]

If anyone thinks he can make a living trading full time on R100000 he's smoking mealie stalks. Not too many on this forum who would be prepare to take Garth MacKenzie on, and what he makes with R250000 capital certainly wouldn't give you a great lifestyle. I'd say you need at least one big one, and then you must know what you're doing.

[Russ]

Simon's answer makes sense.If your annual living expenses are say R100000-00 and you think you can get a return of 33% on your capital,then you require starting capital of about R300000-00 just to survive.If you only make 10% per year then you need to start with R1 mil.

[SimonPB]

yip, point is not to live off your profits but live off your savings and add profit to the savings, ideally at faster rate then you spend .. so you have income for the first year and trading capital, so the pressure is to a degree off you

[ndabs]

interesting topic, one of my pipeline dreams..... I was thinking of having someone(need to be careful there) trade for me say 250k and maybe trade 100k trade myself... Not sure how are returns the guys offer are though

[Rams]

trading R100k , with ALSI futures intraday trading, you could make minimum R20k per month...but then again, we been told that , intraday day trading is like a full time job...

[Parttimer]

Hi All, thanks

[Bentley]

on the realchartist.com website you can download a spreadsheet which will calculate your monthly profit based on number of points per day, capital amount etc. The default amount happens to be 100 000 and I see that there is what seems to be a very sensible capital growth as well as income stream allowed for. As far as i know this is based on real experience with some of the site members.

[Bentley]

http://www.realchartist.com/resources/free-downloads.html - that is the webpage for anyone interested. It seems fully configurable to any size account and contract size. Amazingly a member of the site went from 30K to 900K in less than 2 years.

[#17]

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[#18]

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[WES]

No fair enough rams, what I actually meant, is the resources that the pro's have aviable to them, remember rookies do this as a hobby and then they start to like it, and think hey....maybe I can do this full time....and you can't, only my opinion. Remember I am talking about TRADING not Investing. I think you MUST invest on your own, because you will do better than putting your money in unit trust or into policies or into asset managers, given you do your research, but tading....no ways. A successful trader is someone that is right 51 % of the time, for a rookie to achieve that is difficult.

[Rams]

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