A broker's minimum deposit, which can be as low as a few dozen dollars, only tells you that an account can be opened. The money you actually need to start trading is an amount where 1 to 2 percent of it, the usual limit for a single trade, is still clearly bigger than the spread and commission that trade costs you. People mix these two numbers up all the time, and that mix-up is what ends a lot of first accounts.

In this article we will first show you how to work out the second number for yourself. Then we get to the question that is always sitting behind this one: in the end, how much can you make a month?

The minimum deposit is the broker's number, not yours

A minimum deposit is a marketing number. It says "we will open an account for you", not "with this amount you can place a trade that makes sense". To find your own number you have to come at it from the other side: the risk on each trade.

The common rule is to risk no more than 1 to 2 percent of your whole account on any one trade. Now apply it to a small account. If your account is $100, 1 percent is $1. That one dollar has to absorb the spread and commission of the same trade and still leave you something worth having. When the round-trip cost of a trade is about the same size as your entire allowed risk, you have effectively lost before you start. The real costs of every trade works through this math with numbers.

So what is the right number?

There is no fixed number that is right for everyone, because it depends on the instrument, your broker's spread and how far away your stop loss sits. But the way to find it is always the same: work out your allowed position size for a real trade with the risk calculator, get the cost of that same trade from your broker, and check whether the amount at risk is meaningfully bigger than the cost. If it is not, your account is too small. That is the whole test.

We cover how to size a position properly in what a lot is and how to calculate position size.

The mistake almost everyone makes with a small account

When the account is small, the natural temptation is to raise the leverage so the profit becomes "worth it". That is exactly what you should not do. High leverage lets you open a bigger position with the same small account, and once you open it, every pip moves a bigger percentage of your account and the distance to a margin call gets shorter.

This is why European regulators capped leverage for retail clients: 30:1 on major currency pairs and lower than that on everything else. You can read ESMA's announcement of the measures (opens in a new tab) yourself. Those caps did not come from kindness. They came from loss data.

Now the real question: how much can you make a month?

The honest answer is that there is no reliable number, and anyone who gives you a definite one is selling something. The reason is not complicated:

  • A trading result is a percentage of your capital, not a fixed salary. Ten percent of $100 is $10.
  • That percentage is not stable either. Losing months are a normal part of any sound method, not a sign that something is broken.
  • Costs and market conditions do not stay fixed, and a method can work well for a while and then stop working.

Instead of asking what percent a month you can make, ask a sharper question: what was the expectancy of my method over my last 100 trades, and how widely did the results swing around it? That you can measure. Win rate vs expectancy shows why win rate on its own does not answer it.

An outside check you can run today

In the EU, every CFD provider has to publish the percentage of its retail accounts that lose money, right on its website. Go to the site of any EU-regulated broker you are considering and find that number. It is the best antidote to ads that present monthly income as if it were a paycheck. The FCA's explanation of CFD risk (opens in a new tab) for the UK follows the same logic.

What if you have the skill but not the capital?

This is exactly the gap the funded account model was built for. After an evaluation, a firm gives you an account under its own contract and pays you a share of the profit you make on it; at many firms that account is simulated, not real money in the market. But the model comes with fees and conditions, the providers are not all alike, and if you fail the evaluation, that cost is yours.

Before you pay anything, read how to tell a legit prop firm from a scam, and then what a prop firm challenge is and why most people fail it. Between them, they cover the mistakes behind most of the money people lose at exactly this stage.

The right question is not how much money to start with. It is how much money lets you take your next 100 trades by the rules and still be standing.

Summary

The minimum deposit is the broker's number. Your number comes from the risk on each trade: that risk has to be meaningfully bigger than what the trade costs. Reaching for high leverage does not make up for a small account; the bigger positions it allows only speed up the trip to zero. And monthly income is not a number anyone can promise you.

If you want to see the right order of steps, start with the roadmap and log the result of every practice session in the trading journal. If trading ever becomes real income for you, that is where it will come from, not from an ad.