See scenarios for how much forex day traders can make based on their win rate, risk/reward, position size, and number of trades.
In forums and in emails I receive, a common question is “How much money can I make day trading forex?” The questions vary, such as “How long to double my forex account?” or “I have $X, how much can I make in a day/month on that?”
Before getting into how much forex day traders can make, day trading is aboutprocess—routines and plans based on tested strategies.If we have a good process that we follow, then money will come. If we don’t have a good process, our money will go to other traders who do.
While many people coming to trading are just looking to make a few quick dollars, the reality is that almost all these people will lose their money because they want the money without developing a sound trading process.
Developing a process involves creating and testing a strategy that produces a profit over many trades, and then creating rules and risk management around that strategy to keep ourselves from losing the money we make.
Once a processis developed, often called atrading plan, then the money starts to flow. How much depends on several factors:
- Thewin rateof the strategy over many trades.
- The average reward:risk over many trades.
- How many trades are taken.
- Position Size
- Which is a function of capital in the account, and
- Capital risked on each trade (includingleverage).
We’ll cover all these factors below.
Scenarios for How Much Forex Day Traders Make
Assume a trader develops a strategy that produces on average 3 trades per day (average), or about 60 per month.
The average reward:risk is 2:1, meaning they tend to make twice as much on winners as they lose on losers.
They win 50% of their trades (0.5).
They risk 1% of their account on each trade. This means if a trade is lost, the account drops by 1%. If a trade is won, the account increases by 2% (2:1 reward:risk). Risking 1% of the account is for people with an established method that have worked up to risking 1%. When starting out, risk 0.1% or 0.2% per trade. Only increase the position size/risk if profitable.
Using this data, we can calculate how much this strategy will make.
Winning trades: (60 x 0.5) x 2% = 60%
Losing trades: (60 x 0.5) x 1% = 30%
Gross profit: 60% – 30% = 30%
On a $5,000 account, that’s a profit of $1,500 per month.
On a $1,000 account, the profit is $300.
On a $10,000 account, the profit is $3,000.
Then deduct your commission costs on 120 transactions (60 trades). Commissions are discussed in detail below.
Using this strategy, a trader could make 30% in a month on the capital they have in their account. This is a monthly result because the total trades for the month were used in the calculation.This is possible because leverage is being used extensively. This is also discussed in the sections below.
This can easily be tweaked to accommodate other results.
4 Trades Per Day, 1.5:1 Reward:Risk, 45% Win Rate
Assume a strategy produces 4 trades per day (80 per month), the risk:reward is 1.5:1, and the win rate is 45%. The trader risks 1% of their account on each trade.
Winning trades: (80 x 0.45) x 1.5% = 54%
Losing trades: (80 x 0.55) x 1% = 44%
Gross profit: 10%, less commissions.
3 Trades Per Day, 2.5:1 Reward:Risk, 60% Win Rate
Or assume a strategy produces 3 trades per day (60 per month), the risk:reward is 2.5:1, and the win rate is 60%. The trader risks 1% of their account on each trade.
Winning trades: (60 x 0.6) x 2.5% = 90%
Losing trades: (60x 0.4) x 1% = 24%
Gross profit: 66%, less commissions.
Input different amounts of trades, win rates, and reward:risk to determine what’s possible.
This may make it seem very easy to trade and make a good return each month. It isn’t. Most traders lose money, so making these types of returns consistently, while theoretically possible, is not in the cards for most people.
How Much Forex Day Trader Make: Playing with the Numbers
If the reward and risk are the same, about 1:1, the strategy will need to have a win rate above 50% in order to make a profit. Higher when factoring in commissions. If a strategy has a high reward:risk, such as 3:1, the strategy could win 30% of the time and still be profitable.
If a strategy is profitable, then, assuming the other statistics can remain the same, taking more trades will result in a larger profit. Taking more trades that are low quality, or not part of a tested strategy, will result in worse performance.
There are multiple ways to improve results. Problems can often be isolated by looking at win-rate and reward:risk and finding ways to tweak these statistics more in our favor.
One of the key takeaways is that you don’t need to be super fancy to make a lot of money.Focus on maintaining a decent reward:risk, and then find ways to keep that win-rate at a level that produces a nice profit (understanding price action, waiting for the correct setup, awaiting atrade trigger, etc.).
See my complete method for day trading forex in the EURUSD Day Trading Course.
How Much Forex Day Traders Make When Including Commissions
With forex day trading,brokerswill typically charge a commission, especially in the US. Outside the US there are brokers that offer tight spreads and don’t charge a commission.
While a commission may seem like a cost, whereas the spread doesn’t, paying a commission for a smaller spread will typically result in better day trading results. Therefore, I opt to use an ECN account with very low spreads—such as 0.00001 to 0.00003 (1/10 to 3/10 of a pip) on the EURUSD—and pay a commission, instead of paying a 1 pip spread.
Commissions typically cost between $0 and $8 per 100,000 traded. The smaller the account, typically the higher the commission cost. Commissions are charged to buy and sell; on 60 trades (in and out) a commission is paid 120 times.
There are brokers with tight spreads that charge NO commission. These will likely become more prominent as stock brokers have had to continually drop their fees over time to remain competitive.
Let’s use actual dollars and use the first scenario above.
- 3 trades per day, or about 60 per month.
- Average reward:risk is 2:1
- Win 50% of their trades.
- $5,000 forex trading account
- Risk 1% of their account on each trade
- 1% of $5,000 is $50 (losing trade), and a winning trade is $100
Winning trades: (60 x 0.5) x $100 = $3,000
Losing trades: (60x 0.5) x $50 = $1,500
Profit: $1,500 on a $5,000 account, or 30%.
But we haven’t factored in commissions. Commissions are typically based on position size, and for that we need to make some assumptions.
Assume that the averagestop losson each trade is 5 pips away from the entry. The trader has a US account and is day trading the EURUSD. They are risking $50 per trade. This means they can purchase 1 standard lot on each trade. A pip of movement will result in a $10 gain or loss with a standard lot, so losing 5 pips would mean a $50 loss, which is our specified maximum.
Now that we have estimated the position size is 1 standard lot for each trade, we can estimate the commission costs.
Obviously, if you don’t pay commission, you don’t need to worry about them.
On the low end, 120 x $1 x 1 standard lot = $120 in commissions.
Or 120 x $8 x 1 standard lot = $960 in commissions with a very high-priced broker.
Net Profit with a low-cost broker: $1,500 – $120 = $1,380 or 27.6% on a $5,000 account. If you don’t pay commissions, then you keep the whole $1 500.
Net Profit with a high-cost broker: $1,500 – $960 = $540 or 10.8% ona $5,000 account.
Also notice, this trader is trading a standard lot, which is 100,000 in currency. They only have $5,000 in their account, so they are utilizing more than 20:1 leverage. This is what makes the high percentage returns possible.
Without leverage, the trader would be limited to buying 5,000 worth of currency at a time, and their profit would drop to 1.5% for the month, less commissions.
If everything stayed the same but you used a 2 pip stop loss, now you can trade 2.5 standard lots per trade. [Because on a $5000 your maximum risk per trade is $50. If you trade 2.5 standard lots and lose 2 pips on them, you will lose $50. So 2.5 lots is the maximum position size for a 2 pip stop loss.]
120 x $1 x 2.5 lots = $300 in commissions with a low commission broker.
120 x $8 x 2.5 lots = $2400 in commissions with a high commission broker. At these high commissions, you are giving away too much to the broker. That is getting close to a livable income for some people. Even if you make 30% per month, you are losing way more than that in commissions. You end up severely negative at the end of the month.
This may make it seem that you are better off using a larger stop loss and a smaller position size. But it is easier to find more trades with a smaller stop loss because trades don’t last as long as the target is also smaller. With a smaller stop loss and target, it is also generally easier to expand the reward:risk over time. If your stop loss and target are already big, it is harder to find more trades and expand the target in most cases. So the smaller stop loss gives more flexibility to improve your win rate, reward:risk, and number of trades over time.
If your account is in another currency than US dollars, then your pip value will not be $10. Your pip value will fluctuate.
Expectations For How Much Can be Made Forex Day Trading
When starting forex trading, expect to lose money at first, then be a little bit profitable. Then, if still in the game after a couple of years, maybe you will get to achieving 10% or more per month with some consistency.Some people reach consistently profitable results within a year, but it is not common. Most forex traders lose money.
The day trading strategy we come up with determines our win-rate, reward:risk, number of trades, and all that. Once you have developed a strategy, you can plug in your own numbers, using the template above, to give yourself an idea of your monthly profit or loss.
Winning 50%+ of trades with a 2:1+ reward to risk on three trades a day may make it seem pretty easy to grab 30%+ per month (before commissions), but very few traders ever achieve this. There are loads oftrading mistakeswe can make that erode the profitability of a strategy:
- We can’t sustain the win-rate or reward:risk over many trades. We may start exiting trades early, which messes with win rate and reward:risk, or we start holding onto losses longer than we’re supposed to. Or we fail to adapt as market conditions change and what worked before no longer does. We miss trades, or get lazy, which reduces our trades taken.
- The leverage kills, because getting caught in one big move could wipe us out.
- Leverage could be reduced by half by risking 0.5% on a trade, for example, instead of 1%. To minimize the risk of leverage, don’t trade right near the New York close, and don’t hold day trades through high-impact news events (check the economic calendar every day).
- The strategy works, but the trader doesn’t have the discipline to follow it.
- They miss trades, take extra ones, don’t placestop losses, don’t take profits when they should, exit trades early, make position size errors…and the list goes on.
- Slippage—the difference between where orders are expected to execute and where they actually execute— erodes our profit potential.
The most important thing for successful forex day trading is to build a process that works. Then, we just need to follow the process. If we do, money will follow. Our goal isn’t the money, our goal is always to follow the process. That’s how consistency is developed.
Also, because of leverage, always get out of day trades a couple of minutes before major economic news announcements. You don’t want to be holding a leverage position when important news hits, as it could do a lot of damage to your account if the price goes the wrong way.
See my complete method for day trading forex in the EURUSD Day Trading Course.
Cory Mitchell, CMT
Disclaimer: These scenarios are possible to achieve due to leverage, but are far from typical, as discussed. Nothing in this article is personal investment advice, or advice to buy or sell anything. Trading is risky and can result in substantial losses, even more than deposited if using leverage.
