The Truth About Growing Small Trading Accounts

You've seen the headlines: "$100 to $10,000." "$500 to $1 Million." But is this really how professional traders think—or has the industry sold us a fantasy?

In this episode of Stoic Trading Psychology, we break down the psychology behind the small-account obsession and why chasing massive percentage returns often leads traders to overleverage, abandon risk management, and develop destructive habits. We'll discuss what professional traders actually focus on, what realistic long-term returns look like, and why becoming consistently profitable is far more valuable than trying to flip a tiny account overnight.

If you've ever felt pressured by social media trading challenges or wondered why so many traders struggle to grow their accounts, this episode will challenge your perspective and encourage you to think like a professional—not a gambler.

Transcript

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Growing a small trading account is one of the most common videos that I see in the online trading community space here on YouTube. There is some truth to it, but obviously, since I'm doing this podcast, you guys probably know I'm going to be going on a rant about that entire concept, probably bursting some bubbles, slapping a lot of you guys back into reality here because it's a big misconception, and I will be breaking it uh down in today's episode of the Stoic Trading Psychology Podcast. I am Kevin, also known as FX Telepath, here on YouTube. If you want to learn about trading and how I trade and my strategy and follow my weekly forex forecast, subscribe to my YouTube channel at FXTelepath. And then this channel, the Stoic Trading Psychology Podcast channel, is designed to help you guys with obviously with the trading psychology aspect of things. Because if you can't handle losing, if you can't handle win streaks, losing streaks, unfortunate events where your orders don't get filled, you will never be able to come become a professional trader. So the whole concept of this podcast is to promote stoicism regarding trading psychology. We have to be stoic traders. Listen to my other podcasts, watch my other podcasts. And again, if you want to follow along with my forecast every single week and learn the strategy behind my trading, that's where you can find my videos at FX Telepath on YouTube. But this episode is about trading psychology. So let's get right into it here. So again, one of the most common videos I see from these quote unquote online trading gurus is talking about growing a small trading account. And firstly, I just want to say, is it possible? Sure. It is certainly possible. The reality is that it's very, very unlikely. A lot of people have the wrong mindset when it comes to you know trading. And unfortunately, they think they can grow a small trading account. And what do I mean by small? Let's let's define the terms first. What does a small trading account really mean? I would say anywhere between $500 to like, I don't know, $1,000. That's that's kind of what I view as growing a small trading account, or what I would refer to as a small account. Even like $5,000, I would say is small. Obviously, I understand that $500 maybe isn't small to you personally, and I and I get that. I'm not saying that you know if you only have $500, there's no point in trading. I don't think that. I'm just the whole point of this podcast today is to point you guys in the right direction if you have a small trading account. And the reason I'm saying $500 to $1,000 is because, well, I obviously I have my YouTube channel at FX Telepath. I get tons of messages, comments every single day on my channel. A very common one I get is Kevin, I'm depositing $500 into my account. What can I expect by depositing this? How much returns can I make per year, per month, per week, per day, whatever. And that is pretty much the wrong mindset. Again, I will be slapping a lot of you guys back into reality here. So don't get upset with what I'm saying. Try to understand what I'm saying and apply what I'm saying here in this podcast, and you'll be on the right track. Firstly, I will say, if you have a small trading, so for example, actually, somebody joined my group the other day, my Discord group, and they were messaging me, like I I think it was they were putting in $1,000 into their trading account, and then they wanted to risk it was like 5% a trade or something. Because I and I understand why they want to do that, right? You you put $1,000 in, you you want to make money with it. And I understand making money is important. So they put they put a thousand dollars in, they want to risk five percent because if they win some trades, obviously they wanna they want a nice return. They don't want to make 10 20 bucks on a trade because 10 20 bucks is nice. I'll take 10 20 bucks all day. However, it's not really that much money if you're trying to supplement your income or if you're trying to become a professional full-time trader, $10-20 per trade is just simply not going to pay the bills, it's not going to cut it. So that's why these these people, these new these beginner traders, they want they they want to put $1,000 into an account or $500 in an account and they want to risk five, 10% of their account so that they can actually make a nice return dollar wise. And you have to change your framing from dollar returns to percent returns. That is the first step into becoming a professional trader, and if you have a small trading account. So, what do I mean by changing your mindset from dollars to percent? Well, it's very simple. If you view it as dollars, if you view your returns in dollars and you have a small trading account, you're gonna risk more than 1%, which you should not do, right? I'm a professional trader, I've been doing this for six years. I don't really ever risk more than 1%. The odd time, if I'm very, very convinced by my higher time frames, by my setup, maybe I will risk 1.5 to 2% on a trade, but it's extremely rare, and I never really ever recommend it, especially if you were a new trader. This is how you start to blow accounts. Because for one, you if you only have $500 to deposit into a trading account, you're most likely probably pretty desperate to make some money. And I'm not I'm not criticizing you for that. I understand times are tough these days in the this economy. I get it. Uh, but you have to change your mindset from dollars to percentage because it doesn't matter if somebody tells me they made $50,000 trading the last year. Obviously, that's pretty impressive. Um $50,000 is a ton of money. I understand, especially with a side hustle. It's an insane amount of money. However, this was this the questions I asked was is this person's net worth $20 million? Is it like how big is their trading account? Is it a million dollars? Then at that point, it's still impressive, but it's not that impressive. And then if you tell me you made $50,000 trading last year and your account was fifty thousand dollars, you made a hundred percent. It's clearly you were you were risking way more than you should have, and that's a huge problem. So the first step is to change your mindset from growing your by you have to change your mindset from percentage or sorry, from dollar amounts to percentage. And the reason that we do that is because if you are depositing $500 into your trading account or $1,000 into your trading account, you're most likely a beginner trader, which is fine. But again, you're gonna do stupid decisions and risk more than you should because you're trying to make money. The framing that you have to have in your mind is percentage. Because and the framing also is I'm here to learn. I'm gonna risk 1% of my account, even less. I actually recommend risking 0.5% when you first start trading because you're not trying if you if you have a 500, I'll make it very simple. If you have a $500 account or a $1,000 account or even anything less than a $5,000 account, your framing should be I am going to learn and maybe earn while I learn. But learning is the thing you have to have in the forefront of your mind, not making money. Okay. What I tell people all the time, I mentioned this on my podcast several times. If when you first start trading, your mindset framing at the forefront of your mind has to be I am learning. And what I recommend everybody does is like let's say you have a really good job, it pays very well. Let's just use random numbers just for the sake of the example. Let's say you make a hundred grand a year and that you live a very comfortable life. I still only recommend depositing $500 to $1,000 into your trading account. But clearly you're not desperate for money. Your framing and your mindset should still be about learning. But let's say you deposit $500 to $1,000 in your trading account, and the job you have, you don't like it, you don't make a lot of money in the job, you only make $40,000, $50,000 a year. It's not that much, especially in today's economy. If that's your situation, it's reasonable and understandable that you want to make more money and that you're going to risk more on your account. But what I recommend to these individuals that have that low of an income. And I'm not saying it's that bad. It's I'm just trying to make a comparison from like 50, 40, 40, 50 grand to 100 grand a year in your job. What I always recommend is to not, yes, you can learn trading. Definitely on the side, an hour a day. An hour to two hours a day. It's completely reasonable if you have the time to learn trading, to actually practice trading. I completely get it. That's what I did as well. But the the problem comes with these people thinking that they're going to grow their small trading account. The framing you need to have is that you're learning and that also while you're not doing trading, you're trying to get a better job. You have to build other life skills in order to make more money on your day job. It's that simple. Trading should be you should be focusing on trading as a side hustle, not as a full-time income. Eventually, maybe five years down the road, you can turn trading into a full-time income. Maybe we can talk about that uh in another podcast. But your your if you so if this is you, I'm gonna explain a person right here. If this is you, this is what you should do. So if you only have $500 to a thousand dollars to deposit in your trading account, if your job that you have, your full-time job is not great, it doesn't give you a lot of money and freedom because it's less money, then you need to one number one, focus on your real life for the majority of your time. Spend it trying to get a better job, trying to build your skills, trying to get a better job that will pay you more money. At the same time, again, an hour, two hours a day, you can focus on practicing trading, learning, trading, actually trading while risking 0.5 to 1% of your account so that you can learn. You're not trying to earn, you are trying to learn at these stages of development in your trading career. Okay, you have to do that. I know that might be upsetting to a lot of people because everybody wants to get rich next month. That's not the reality. Trust me, I would be a way, way more popular YouTube YouTuber if I did uh more videos on oh grow a $500 account to $500,000 or oh, you could become a full-time trader in three months. I'd be a way more popular trader. But that I my whole channel is designed to to promote real trading in realistic trading results and trading careers. So you have to understand that you have to focus on your real life as well. Get that better job because why? Well, this is why. Because, in my opinion, so let's say if I let let's just walk through as if it was me. Let's say I'm only making 40 grand a year, I can barely pay the bills, uh, I'm getting by, you know. Do I have some extra money? Sure. I have an extra money. I put $500 into my trading account or $1,000 on my trading account. Let's just say that's me. The way I would frame the way I would go about this is, you know, I'd work my full-time job. Let's just say it's nine to five. And then, you know, hopefully, while if I'm at my job, I can try to look for better jobs. I would focus on building more skills so that you can get better jobs, right? And what I mean by skills is, you know, physical skills, like I don't know, let's just say you you want to start your own company on a your own tiling or flooring company or something, whatever. Try to pick up a part-time job doing that so you can build skills, start a business so that you can make more money. That's number one, in my opinion. You have to do that, and then also you can be learning, right? Learn trading, start to practice trading. But the the the at the forefront of your mind has to be I need to make more money because my plan, if this was me, my plan would be to over the next year, I need to build my real life skills, whether it's you know, physical skills where you're learning, you know, a skilled trade, something like that. And then also your personality skills, right? Read how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. It's an amazing book, it will help you in your real life. It's helped me immensely uh and in so many different parts of my life. You have to read that book. Okay, that's number one. Read that book, get it right now, order it on Amazon. It's a great book. Have to read it. Take notes in the book, highlight, underline, um, put sticky tabs on important parts and come to back to that book. It's so important, and this will help you. I mean, it's the title of the book. Info build make friends and influence people. If you can influence people, you can get ins. You can get in with maybe their business, maybe you can you know just build confidence because if you build confidence, you can get a better job. It's really that simple. Um, and uh and higher paying jobs, right? You have to build confidence, build leadership skills as well. You have to be a leader. I know that this isn't really about trading, but it all ties in, trust me. You have to be a leader. Look at the great leaders of you know the the world in history. Read books about them, read their biographies. You have to, you have to become a leader. It's so important that will help you get real life skills to help you get better jobs and uh and eventually the entailment of getting better jobs is more money. It's that simple. So build leadership skills, learn how to make friends, learn how to influence people, and over the next year, treat it in a year time frame. Over this next year, I'll be building my skilled trade skills, I'll be learning entrepreneurship, I will be learning how to build make friends and influence people, um, building my leadership skills, read books, do the readings, guys. It's so important. Become stoic, obviously, as well. That will help you. And after that year, hopefully, you have raised your income or you're on the path to raise your income. At the same time, you are learning trading, you are actually training. It takes a while, guys. You're not gonna learn trading and be a professional trader in three months. You're just not. I'm sorry. So build your real life skills up, and then once you have that better job where you're making maybe you're making more money, make that money for a bit. The next year you should be making that money. Just basically repeat everything you did the last year for this next year while continuing to learn how to trade. It's gonna take a couple years. And eventually you will get good at trading where it's like, okay, I can actually maybe make a side side income with this. But the key thing here is you're not gonna grow that small account. You just simply aren't. Let's say you have $500, you're depositing $500 into $500 into your trading account. Let's say you make 100% a year, which I promise you you're not. Maybe on a rare, rare, super rare occasion, you will very, very, very unlikely. I think anywhere between 10 to 20% a year is amazing for trading. Right? You can invest in the SP 500, you can do investing as well, maybe make eight to 10% a year average there. And then if you're trading as well on the side, maybe you make 10% there. That's 20% a year. That's fantastic, right? These unfortunately, it's just the the way the trading industry is where there's just so many misconceptions about it because these gurus just want clicks because everybody wants to turn $500 into $500,000. That is not going to happen. I'm sorry, it's just not. Let's say you put $500 into a trading account and you make 100% a year. Again, which you're not, but let's just, for the sake of the example, let's use an extreme amount. Because anything less, obviously the results will be anything less than 100% a year, growing that trading account will be even harder and longer. So let's just use a hundred percent because you're not gonna make it, but let's just it's in it's a simple number. So you do you put $500 into your account, you somehow make a hundred percent a year, you're at a thousand dollars. That's year after year one. After year two, you make another hundred percent, you're at two thousand dollars. Year three, you're at four thousand dollars. Year four, you're at eight thousand dollars. After year five, you're at sixteen thousand dollars, which is a lot of money. But is it right? Okay, after like year five, you know, sixteen thousand dollars, you make a hundred percent a year, you're doing really good. But remember, so after year five, if you make a hundred percent a year, it's pretty it's pretty solid, you're making a nice little side income. But remember, you're not gonna make a hundred percent a year. You're at best, you're gonna make twenty percent a year, roughly, on average. If you're a really good trader and you're a stoic trader, and you've mastered trading psychology and you have a great strategy. But remember, you're not gonna make a hundred percent. So even after year five, let's just say you have twenty grand in your trading account and you make a hundred percent. Okay, you've made twenty grand that that that year. It's a nice little side hustle. But the better path, the better thing to focus on, again, considering you're not even gonna make a hundred percent a year, so that's basically impossible to grow your account like that. The better path is to do what I said build your life skills, become a leader so that you can get a better job while saving money, so that you can deposit money while learning trading, so that after two years, you've built a bigger net worth, you have more in your savings, you have a better job, you're more comfortable, and at the same time, you've been learning trading and building your trading skills. At that point, you want to deposit if you if you are confident in your strategy, you've mastered your psychology, you you have a nice little net worth going from your increased income from your better jobs if you're becoming a leader, um, then what you want to do is then you can start to deposit more money into your trading account. Maybe at that point you can have a $15,000 to $20,000 trading account. And then what we and then as the time goes on, you're still practicing, you're still doing everything I said, and then you continue to deposit more money, and then eventually that 10% return becomes really good. It's a 10 to 20% return becomes really, really good. This is a long-term approach. A lot of you guys are probably 20 years old, 25 years old. Well, if you do this for 10 years, say you're 20, now you're 30, you could have a hundred thousand dollar trading account if you take the appropriate steps and the proper steps. You could have a hundred thousand dollar trading account, and then you can continue to deposit money, and eventually you'll be making a very significant income from trading. And I know this is probably upsetting to a lot of for a lot of people to hear, but I'm just telling you outright, these videos where they're saying grow a small trading account, $500 to $500,000, it's ridiculous. It is such a lie. Think it just think about it. Think about the logic behind that. If you make 100% a year, that take you forever. And you're not even gonna do that. It's so stupid. It's like one of the and it's just all it is, it's uh it's appealing to the emotions of uh emotional beginner traders who have no psycho, they have no concept of trading, and they think, oh, because you just click buy and you click sell, it must be so easy. It's not. This takes time, it takes practice, it takes skill, it takes capital to make that much money. And I mean, I'm not gonna get into it here, but I don't even think they're making that much money. They probably aren't. It's ridiculous. Um, in order to make that much money in that percent return, you have to be risking a huge amount of your account. And then you have to also have data over 500 trades or so of what your average drawdown looks like. Because if you're risking 10% a trade and you can take a 10% draw and you can take a 10 loss and loses in a row, you've determined that by your data. You just blow in your account and you got to start over. It's stupid. So stop falling for these videos of growing a small trading account. It is such a lie, it's such a myth, and it's just appealing to these beginner traders who want to make money and they're desperate. And I understand the desperation. I'm not giving you guys a hard time for that desperation, but you have to treat this better. And the good thing about what I'm saying is that the instructions that I've given will build your life skills, it will help you become a leader. And again, I know this this whole episode is more than just trading, but I really want you guys to succeed in in real life in general. Ever since I've learned how to become stoic, and I'm not saying I'm perfect, I am definitely not perfect at all. Becoming stoic, becoming a leader, doing the readings has improved my life immensely. I cannot even begin to describe how much it has changed my life. And the reality, like, if you have no life skills, if you have no ability to make friends, you have no ability to influence people, you have no leadership skills, and you make a bunch of money trading, that'll that's great, but you kind of want to build everything. So I guess the whole concept of this episode, and kind of what I'm promoting here, is to just become a better person overall. Strive to be the best person that you can, and it'll help you in your trading. And to understand that this whole growing a small trading account is one of the biggest lies. And you can just simply take the 100% a year concept and apply that to your capital and realize, wow, this is gonna take five years. It would literally be easier and quicker for me to just build my life skills up, get more money, deposit more money to my trading account so that I can grow my like the only way to grow your trading account is to have more money from your job and to deposit it into your account where eventually you have a hundred thousand, hundred fifty thousand dollar trading account and you're making a lot of money. It's that simple. So I'm sorry if I burst your bubble, I'm sorry if I slapped you back into reality, but I actually care about the people who watch my videos, unlike a lot of these fake online trading gurus. And I'm not calling out anybody individually, but guys, you have to understand it's ridiculous, and they're just appealing to the emotions of beginner traders, and I'm not gonna do that here. Hopefully, this this podcast helped you guys. Let me know what you think. Hit that subscribe button on my stoic trading psychology video or pod or channel, whatever. And again, if you want to learn my strategy, FX Telepath on YouTube. Tons of educational videos, a forecast every week, no hindsight, PL, or any of that crap. It's all there. I I I show the trades before they take place. They're not signals, but I will point out setups. I'm like, okay, this is probably gonna work out. And it's all there. Video evidence. Remember, I can't post a video on YouTube and then go back and edit it. It's not possible. At least I don't think. Maybe it is. I've been saying this whole time. I don't think it is. But I can't just edit a video out and be like, oh, that call out didn't work. I better go edit that out. I don't do that. It's all on YouTube. I've been forecasting on YouTube for five years. Maybe even longer now at this point. I kind of forget. It's not hindsight PL. PL can be faked. It's all fake. Alright? I mean, I'm not saying it's all fake. I guess I just said that, but a lot of it is just complete nonsense and just appealing to emotion and it's pathetic. And you guys need to start to take this seriously. And that all begins with taking other parts of your life seriously. I know so many people, like their whole life is just the gym. It's like they go to work and then it's just like gym, gym, gym. I gotta get stronger. I ask them why you have to get stronger, they have no answer. They're they they respond by asking me a qu I ask them a question and then they respond by asking me a question. Why do you have to get stronger? Well, why not? It's not answering my question. And I guess I'm just going on a little bit of a rant here. But their whole focus is on the gym. And I'm not saying that's that's bad, but I am saying it is bad to only focus on one thing. You have to master several aspects of life. For example, if you go to the gym, if you only focus on going to the gym, maybe your physique will get better, you'll be healthier. But how is that going to help you in life financially? It's not. And that's why I'm saying you have to have a balance. And there's nothing wrong with for one year, 90% of your free time is about trading. So for me, for example, I've been trading for a while now. For two years, it was like all I did was trading. It's all I wanted to do. And now that I'm kind of more stable, and you know, I've I've become a better trader, and now I have to focus on other things because I'm trying to, I guess it's like a clean life max. You have to start life maxing. It's not just about trading, okay? You have to, if you want to grow your small trading account, the only way you're doing that is by putting more money into your trading account. And the only way to do that is if you get a better job. Save money, learn financial literacy. You have to be financially smart. There's so many aspects of this, and maybe I'll start to do more episodes than this. Let me know what you guys think about this episode. More life skill building. If you guys want me to talk more about that, I would happily talk about that. Um and yeah, so hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode. Let me know what you think. I'm sorry if I upset a lot of you. I'm sure that maybe I slapped a lot of you back into reality. It doesn't mean not to do this. And again, by doing what I say, it will only benefit you. Let's just say you build your entire let's just say you do this for the next two years. You build your life skills up, you get a better job, you become stoic, you become a leader, your life is getting better, but you just can't make it as a trader. You just can't do it for whatever reason, you can't get a good strategy going, you just can't handle for whatever reason you can't handle trading. Did you really lose? No. You built life skills, you become better. It's a win win. Anyways, I will see you in the next episode.