How much money do you need to start forex?

Between $200 and $1,000, and it isn't the broker who decides: it's how wide your stop is. The minimum deposit a website advertises answers what they'll accept, which is not the same as what you need. The number you're after is the capital that keeps the smallest trade you can open inside 1% of your account, and that sum is worked backwards.

Why isn't the broker's minimum deposit the answer?

Plenty of retail brokers will open an account for $10 or $100, which is where "you can start with whatever you have" comes from. It's true, and it's useless, because it answers a question that isn't yours.

• What the broker answers: how little money it will take to let you in.
• What you need to know: how much money it takes to trade at a risk that won't bury you.

Two different numbers, and the second one doesn't depend on the broker at all. It depends on two things you can already work out: the minimum position size and the distance of your stop.

What's the smallest trade you can open?

That's the floor everything else sits on. Size is measured in lots, and pip value scales with it:

0.01 lots is the usual minimum at a retail broker. And that's the crux: however small your account is, you cannot open less than that. Your minimum risk per trade isn't something you choose — it's the micro lot multiplied by your stop.

With a 20-pip stop, the smallest trade in existence risks $2. With a 50-pip stop, $5. There is no way to risk less and still be trading.

So how much capital does it take?

This is where you run the sum backwards. The 1% rule says no single trade should cost you more than 1% of the account. If the minimum risk is $2, the minimum account for $2 to be 1% is $200.

Invert the position-sizing formula and you get the table that actually answers the question:

That's the number you were after, and it depends on how you trade, not on what a website advertises. Tight stops on minute charts lower the bar; wide stops on daily charts raise it. If your broker allows sizes below 0.01 the floor drops proportionally, but the logic is unchanged: the minimum capital is whatever makes your smallest trade still small.

What if I start with less?

It isn't that you can't. It's that you lose the ability to manage risk at all, and it's worth seeing exactly what that means.

With $50 and a 30-pip stop, the smallest trade available costs you $3. That's 6% of the account on a single trade — and it isn't a decision you made. It's the least the market will let you risk at that balance.

Which is where risk of ruin comes in. Risking 1%, you can survive twenty losses in a row and keep most of the account. Risk substantially more and an entirely ordinary streak — five or six losses, something every strategy produces — is enough to end it. And drawdowns aren't symmetric: losing 20% takes a 25% gain to get back to flat, and losing 50% takes 100%.

Starting below the floor doesn't slow you down. It forces you to break the 1% rule on every trade, starting with the first.

Doesn't leverage fix this?

No, and this is the most expensive confusion in the whole question.

Leverage determines margin: how much the broker holds back to let you open the position. A standard lot of EUR/USD needs $217 of margin at 1:500 and $1,085 at 1:100 — same trade, different collateral.

But risk doesn't live in the margin, it lives in the notional. Raising leverage doesn't reduce what you lose when price goes against you by a single cent. It only lets you open positions your account shouldn't be carrying. That's why leverage doesn't lower the minimum capital. What it does is let you ignore it.

So what do we actually recommend?

With all of the above on the table, an honest range:

And the caveat that matters more than the figure: this number says nothing about what you'll make. It says what you need so that a normal losing streak doesn't end the story. Starting at the minimum is perfectly reasonable. Starting below it means paying to trade without being able to learn anything from the result.