What you need to start, and the costs
Day 01 of 26 · 7 min read · By DT Terminal
Before a first live trade you need a broker account, a trading platform, charts, a way to record every trade and money you can afford to lose. This lesson covers what each one is and what it costs, from spreads and commissions to overnight swaps, and the costs that are easy to miss.
Five things before your first trade
You need five things: charts to plan the trade, a broker account to place it, a record of every trade, a device with a stable connection, and time plus money you can afford to lose.
02 Broker
03 Recordreview, then plan the next trade
They work as a loop: plan on the chart, place at the broker, record the trade, review it, then plan the next one.
Charts, and a record you can verify
Charts. Most traders learn on TradingView, and the free plan is enough to start. A planned trade has three prices on the chart: the entry, the stop and the target.
DT Terminal ChartsEURUSD · H1A record. Write down every trade. The strongest record is one the broker writes: sync the account and every trade comes in as it happened, with nothing left out or edited later.
- Step 1UnverifiedYou type the trades in
- Step 2Demo · SyncedA demo account syncs, nothing at stake
- Step 3Broker-VerifiedA live account syncs its real fills
- Step 4Payout-VerifiedA payout, confirmed by a person
DT Terminal is free to start, and this course needs nothing more. See plans and prices.
Go deeper
TradingView's paid plans start from roughly $15 a month, less if you pay yearly. They add more indicators per chart, more charts per layout and more alerts. You only need one when the free limits get in your way.
A spreadsheet can hold the same columns, and that is its weakness: every cell can be changed after the fact, and a trade you would rather forget can simply never be entered. A synced record has no such gap, which is what lets it prove, to you, a prop firm or anyone else, that you followed your plan.
A broker account, demo first
A broker holds your money and fills your orders through a free platform, usually MetaTrader 5 (MT5). Open a demo account first: live prices, virtual money, nothing at risk. A live account can fill a little worse than a demo, especially around news. Day 7 walks through a first demo trade.
- Spread, paid on every trade
- Every trade
- Near 1 pip or less on EURUSD
- Commission
- Per lot
- Compare it with the spread, never alone
- Swap
- Held overnight
- A small cost, sometimes a credit, past the daily rollover
- Money in and out
- Deposits and withdrawals
- Deposit, withdrawal and currency conversion fees
Choose one that is licensed by a regulator such as the FCA, ASIC or CySEC, is on that regulator's register, and runs MT5 on desktop, in a browser and on your phone.
Go deeper
Check the register yourself rather than trusting a logo on the broker's site: search the firm's name and licence number on the regulator's own website, and make sure the web address listed there is the one you are on. In the US, retail forex is regulated by the CFTC and the NFA and CFDs are not offered to retail traders, so the choice there is narrower.
Spread, commission and swap are worked through with numbers in Day 4. The costs that catch new traders out are the smaller ones: an inactivity fee on an account left unused for months, a withdrawal fee, and a currency conversion on every deposit when your bank's currency is not the account's. Every one of them is on the broker's fee and terms pages.
A demo has no real order to fill, so around news and in quiet markets a live account can fill a little worse than the demo did. That gap is called slippage.
A device, a connection and time
A device. MT5 runs on Windows, Mac, the web and your phone.
A connection. Home broadband is enough, with the broker's app on your phone as a backup. A stop loss and take profit set in MT5 sit on the broker's server, so they keep working if you go offline. A trailing stop does not: it runs in your terminal.
Time. Expect a few hours a day early on, replaying sessions in the backtester and watching the session you trade. Day 5 covers when each one runs.
How much money you need
There is no single right amount. One line decides it: account size × risk % = dollars risked per trade.
While you learn, risk about 1% a trade and rarely more than 2%. Day 4 shows why.
| Account size | At 0.5% | At 1% | At 2% |
|---|---|---|---|
| $500 | $2.50 | $5 | $10 |
| $1,000 | $5 | $10 | $20 |
| $5,000 | $25 | $50 | $100 |
| $10,000 | $50 | $100 | $200 |
Small accounts trade small: $500 at 1% is $5 a trade, and while you learn that is the point. Use only money you could lose completely: not rent, not savings you need, never borrowed money.
A losing run of 10 costs 10% of the starting balance at this risk.
What $5 a trade buys
On EURUSD the smallest size, 0.01 lots, is worth $0.10 a pip, so $5 covers a stop of up to 50 pips. With a 20 pip stop, $5 ÷ (20 × $10) is 0.025 lots, which rounds down to 0.02 and risks $4. Real money, real fills, and small.
Work back from the dollars
Most people start from a dollar figure. Turn the line round: dollars per trade ÷ risk % = account needed.
Example 01
What $25 a trade takes
| Risk per trade | Account needed |
|---|---|
| 1% | 25 ÷ 0.01 = $2,500 |
| 2% | 25 ÷ 0.02 = $1,250 |
Same lot size either way: 0.10 lots on a 25 pip stop. But ten losses in a row, $250, is 10% of the first account and 20% of the second.
Short of the account you need? Risk fewer dollars on the one you have, or look at a prop firm evaluation (Day 25).
Check the arithmetic in Calculators
EURUSD. It should land on 0.10 lots.A bigger example, and prop firms
Example 02
A trader who wants $100 a trade
| Risk per trade | Account needed |
|---|---|
| 0.5% | $20,000 |
| 1% | $10,000 |
| 2% | $5,000 |
On a EURUSD trade with a 20 pip stop, from 1.08500 down to 1.08300, $100 ÷ (20 × $10) is 0.50 lots.
In a prop firm evaluation you pay a fee to trade the firm's account under its rules, such as a daily loss limit and a maximum drawdown. Pass, and you trade its capital for a share of the profit. On a $10,000 evaluation, 1% is $100 a trade. The fee is gone if you break a rule, and many traders do, so it is a cost to weigh rather than a shortcut.
Your first month and a starter checklist
Example 03
A first month on the free tiers
| Item | Choice | Cost, month one |
|---|---|---|
| Charts | TradingView free plan | $0 |
| Record | A free DT Terminal account | $0 |
| Broker | Demo account | $0 |
| Platform | MT5, free from the broker | $0 |
| Device and internet | The ones you already have | $0 |
| Total | $0 |
A paid TradingView plan makes it roughly $15. A live deposit is capital, not a cost: it stays yours unless you lose it.
Work through the list in order. Most of it takes an evening.
Check yourself
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