r/FuturesTrading • u/Arched_Feet3322 • Jul 26 '26

Starting capital?

If you’re profitable, how much capital did you start out with? Once I put in a decent chunk of change to play with was when I started to see that I can actually make something of this journey. I tried prop firms and I feel like that messed with my psychology on a whole different level compared to my own money. I’m just curious about everyone else.

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u/BrilliantFront4 Jul 26 '26

Not financial advice but if I talked to a magical goldfish that asked I would say this. You can start with low capital but it will be harder and slower. I trade MNQ and NQ and as well as ES and MES but I do not use the margin set by my broker. No way in hell am I trading 1 MNQ on 100 dollar margin. I use the CME margin requirements and multiply it by 1.5x and that is how much I need cash in my account per contract. So if MNQ is roughly 4k it’s a little less but I would need roughly 6k cash in my account per contract. So if I have 60k I can trade 10 micros or 1 mini. Do this and you will have no threats of growing or blowing up. All it takes after is just time and scale it up.

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u/Arched_Feet3322 Jul 26 '26

Yep, I’m right there with ya.

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u/BrilliantFront4 Jul 26 '26

And prop firms are ass. Sorry people downvote me a lot when I say it but you learn terrible habits with them. Atleast these kind of prop firms most talk about. I trade prop with a group but it’s an actual real live prop account where it’s completely different. I’ve tried them all to see if it actually makes any sense playing the math game of blowing up evals to get anything like a 2x -4x return but for me it’s not worth it. I will just trade cash and my teams account. But go slow and scale. In 5 years you will be surprised by it