How Much Money Can I Make Forex Trading?

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“How much money can I make Forex trading?” is a frequently asked question, so I thought I’d show day of trading on the EUR/USD to provide an example, and also explain how much can be made and more.

The example used (below) is from Friday June 29th, and was a good day, although you do get better and worse. In fact, Friday afternoons are not usually the best time to trade, but this was the one that was most recent at the time of writing this article.

EUR USD Profit

The image above shows price changes between the EUR/USD (Euro/U.S.Dollar) from early morning to early evening, and you will notice a run which starts at about 1pm (GMT), and closes around 40 minutes later. If you look at historical graphs for this currency pair you will see that this is often a good time to trade.

The run was from 1.2573 to 1.2674, an increase of approx 100 pips.

How Much Money Would I Make If I had Bought At This Time?

How much you make depends on the Lot Size you are using.

Lot Sizes

Standard Lot – If using a standard lot, you could have potentially realised almost $1,000 profit in approx. 40 minutes (minus the spread which would have been around about $16-$30, depending on the Forex broker you are with). To fund an account of this size though you need to have a high minimum deposit. Some brokers will allow you to trade on even larger lot sizes.

Mini Lot – For a a mini lot, each pip (4th decimal) move would be equal to a dollar, so, about $100 profit minus the $1.60-$3.00 spread.

The 100 pip increase is the maximum that could have been profited from the change in the price of the currency pair (in the run shown). Although, traders could have profited from this situation suing other trading methods

Forex Strategies – Scalping

One of the main strategies for taking advantage of a situation like the one above is scalping, which literally means get in quick, make a profit, get out quick. A lot of scalpers make profits on smaller moves, and to be honest, it would have been difficult to maximise the entire amount of pips gained in the example above (however it is possible).

The purpose of this post is to look at how much money can be made, without going into too much detail about how to scalp, but there are two simple ways (among others). Some traders will follow the charts at key trading times (e.g. 1pm GMT), and as the market starts to move, will follow the trend, and hopefully get out before it turns around. Other traders will wait for an announcement such as the U.S. non-farm payrolls, and see how the market reacts, and follow that.

How Much Could I have Lost?

This all depends on whether you have applied a stop loss, which prevent your account from going past a set debit point. You could have set a conservative stop loss at 20 pips ($200 standard account, or $20 mini account). And, that would be the maximum that you could lose in this instance.

If you have available equity that you can afford to lose, you can sign up with one of the brokers below:

Sign up at Forexyard | $1,000 Min Deposit | * Good support / Bonus More
Sign up at Trading Point | $1,000 Min Deposit | * Good bonus system More
Sign up at eToro | $50 Min Deposit | * User friendly interface More

14 thoughts on “How Much Money Can I Make Forex Trading?”

  1. You are blogging for some time now about these copy trading services in forex market. From your experience what service is technically more advanced than others?

    1. Hi Steve, that depends on what you mean by ‘technically’. Are you talking about filters and trader data? control options on your copied trades (amounts etc)? Or Something else? Regards, G.

  2. Yes i was reffering to trader data , filters , execution , stability. From your opinion which is the best one? Thx.

    1. Hi Steve. To date, I greatly prefer the functionality of ZuluTrade in terms of data filters etc (the user end). Regarding execution and stability, this may dependent on which broker account you use to link to their trade copier interface.

  3. Thank you G , so Zulutrade seems like a winner , i might try them up.I’ve been very eager to start trading with something like this for some time now. Are you having a live account anywhere?

    1. Hi Steve. I’m still demo trading on the platforms – I’ve given myself a bit of time before I live trade – as I’m also going to trade Forex manually, so I’m getting in as much proper learning as I can before I deposit. AAAFX work with the ZuluTrade platform, (same people, so there should be less potential issues than signing up with other brokers) and they have very good spreads – here’s the links if you want to sign up – Open a Live Account. Open a Demo Account. If you haven’t traded on Forex before, it may be a good idea to learn about manual forex trading as well – it’s really interesting, and in my opinion anyone copytrading should do so. Regards, G.

  4. I’ll try the demo account first. As for the AAAfx i think i’ve also read somewhere else that they have the best integration with zulutrade, probably will be my choice if i ever go live in zulu.

    1. Best of luck: if you have any other queries please come back and I’ll see if I can help. If you ever fancy writing about your experiences I’ll publish them and credit you. Regards, G.

    1. Hi Tye, great to hear it! Would you like to give some tips/ideas for some of our readers? G.

  5. Hi thanks for this example. I am familiar with trading commodities but not forex. I think I am going to give it a try. maybe I will copy some good forextraders first at eToro.

  6. What Happened to you Steve? You used to blog about forex social network , i was very interested in your articles , you were to made some comparisons between mirror trader and zulutrade.

    1. Hi JV, I’ve been exceptionally busy lately, and although I love doing this blog, unfortunately I have to prioritise (life sometimes gets in the way of what we really want to be doing), but I will be back soon, G. (p.s., how is your trading going?)

  7. I’m fine Steve , currently trading in zulutrade and the results are satisfying. How about you , are you trading anywhere?

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