ADDITIONAL INFORMATION IF YOU WANT TO START TRADING with a RELATIVELY LOW AMOUNT OF CAPITAL

Some very unethical companies will try to make you believe that the "secret" books and techniques which they want to sell to you will allow you to literally transform $2,000 into $100,000 within a few months. They will of course make that statement for only one reason which is to just try to "sell you something" (their courses, books, seminars etc.), with total disregard to basic common sense and to your personal situation and best interest.

    At PM Traders, our top priority is the satisfaction of our Members and we always want to really make sure that we help you as much as we can to make decisions which will be in YOUR best interest.
    We would never dare to insult your intelligence by making such misleading statements as "Transform $2,000 into $100,000 within 6 months with our Secret Techniques!". Such unethical marketing practice is just not part of our World and of our values. Our priority is to "tell it to you like it is..." and to make sure that our Members are really happy and satisfied with their experience with us. Just "...making another sale..." is definitely not our style.
    It is very important for us that you realize that the odds that you could reach such an incredible return or results are pretty much close to zero. It just does not work that way...

    At PM Traders, we want to tell you what the realities of the trading World really are so that you can really make an informed decision which will be in your best interest...
    The goal of most of our Members is usually to make returns of 0.5% to 2% per trade (of course some of them become incredibly successful and start to occasionally make profits of 10%, 20% and even more within a few minutes or a few hours but they certainly do not represent the majority; the majority of our most successful Members is more in the 0.5% to 2% range of returns (per profitable trades)).
    Some of them also make several such trades during a same trading day, ending up with a much higher total daily return. But overall, if you can consistently make an average of 0.5% to 2% per trade (or even per day), you will of course end up with outstanding YEARLY returns in the 100% to 500% range and more !...

The main downside of starting to trade with a relatively limited capital is that the impact of the commissions on your NET $ PROFITS will of course be greater than it would be if you were trading $20,000 or $50,000. This is simply because of very basic mathematical calculation.
Let's use two examples to illustrate that point...

1 Let's say for example that you BUY the stock MICROSOFT at $100 and you SELL it, 20 minutes later, at $102 therefore making a 2% RETURN (before commissions) on that trade.
    Let's now assume that you were trading with a capital of $5,000.
    This 2% RETURN will therefore translates into a $100 profit (5,000 x 0.02) from which you will have to deduct the trading commissions COSTS (usually $10 for each transaction with a total of $20 to complete a trade ("buy / sell")).
    This will give you a NET PROFIT (before taxes of course) of $80 ($100-$20) which now represents a NET RETURN of 1.6% (which is lower than your original 2% NET RETURN).

2 Now if you had made that very same trade on a $20,000 capital, your GROSS PROFIT would have been $400 (20,000 x 0.02) and your NET PROFIT (after $20 of commissions) would now be $380 which is now a NET RETURN of 1.9% which is much higher than the 1.6% of the previous example and which is also much closer to your original return of 2%!... This is a substantial difference of course, especially when you "add up" all those 0.X% differences at the end of the year, on hundreds of trades !

    We used this example just to demonstrate to you how everything really works and the incidence of starting to trade with a relatively low amount of capital. It is of course very possible as long as you know how it will impact your net $ profits.

    Just remember that if you decide to start trading in those conditions, your main goal will be to LEARN and to PRACTICE. It will be to give yourself a chance at entering the trading World and an opportunity to find out if you could actually become a great and very profitable trader or not.
    If you do become successful, you will hopefully have many options to start trading a much higher capital and therefore you will end up making much higher NET $ PROFITS.

Also, if you find out that you are indeed becoming a good and consistently profitable trader, you will have the option to trade on "margin", allowing you to DOUBLE your NET $ PROFITS using only the same amount of your own capital.

Many beginners like to consider the "paper trading" option which, to us, is like trying to learn how to fly a plane by only reading books. Until you really get yourself into a real plane and take off, you won't be learning much about the realities of flying! And whether you start by flying a small plane (limited trading capital) or a commercial airliner (larger trading capital) will not matter that much as long as you get started and you start to do some REAL flying ("REAL TRADING!")!
It is the exact same thing in our trading World... Whether you start trading with a few thousand dollars or with $100,000, the only way for you to really start your trading journey ... will be to actually start to trade.

LAST MINUTE UPDATE (as of September 2001): The NASD, which regulates many things and rules for stock brokers and their customers (you and us), started implementing several new rules in terms of minimum capital requirements to be able to "day trade" etc. Please make sure that you visit their website to read and learn about their latest updates on these new rules (you can also contact them directly or contact your broker about these rules).
Their Website address is: http://www.nasd.com/default.asp

Additional update: a very new type of account has been created by a European Direct Access broker which might allow you to "day trade" without limitations and with a much lower capital requirement. This type of account is open to everyone but American and Canadian citizens. If you would like more information about it, please click here to visit the Website of this broker and contact them for more detailed information.