How Much Can You Earn from Trading?
Asked that way the question has no answer, because a return is a percentage of capital rather than a fixed sum. But there are real figures you can build an expectation on, instead of building it on a promise.
Last updated: September 7, 2026
Why there is no single number
Nobody can tell you "you will make this much a month", because a trading return is not a salary. It is a percentage of the amount you put at risk.
Five percent a month on a thousand dollars is fifty dollars. The same percentage on a hundred thousand is five thousand. Identical performance, completely different outcome - and the difference is not skill, it is capital.
So anyone promising you a fixed monthly sum either does not understand how this works, or does and is assuming you do not.
The figures serious people use
Professional fund managers running other people's money consider a year excellent if it returns something in the low double digits. Those are whole teams with data and tools you do not have.
So when you see an advert promising ten percent a month, multiply it by twelve and ask yourself: if that were sustainable, why is the person selling it in an advert instead of applying it to their own money?
And a harder fact that should be said: the majority of people who open retail accounts lose money. That figure is published by the regulators themselves, and most brokers in Europe are required to display it on their own pages.
The calculation to do before you start
Invert the question. Instead of "how much will I make?", ask "how much capital do I need for the income I am imagining to be reasonable?"
Take the monthly income you want and divide it by a conservative monthly return. If you want a thousand dollars a month and assume 2% - which is a very good and sustainable figure - you need fifty thousand dollars at risk.
That simple sum does two things: it makes the expectation realistic, and it exposes immediately any promise of a large income from a small account. The starting capital page of this guide completes the point in numbers.
What is worth measuring yourself against at the start
In the first year, the reasonable goal is not profit. It is not to lose much while you learn, and for your results to look similar from one month to the next.
Consistency is harder than profit and more honest than it. A trader who finishes six months near zero with discipline is far closer to success than one who doubled the account in a month and lost it in a week - and that happens more often than you would think.
On this site we publish no projections. We publish closed trades as they happened, on the full closes page - which is the most honest answer to this question we have.
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