What weekly return can you expect from forex?

Many traders are drawn to the forex market when they see the glamorous promises of huge returns. Have you ever seen an advertisement for trading systems that can double your account balance in a week? Or will it bring you a return of 1000%? Those who promote these systems claim that they will deliver the promised results because the forex market allows the use of leverage — which allows you to control money that is much worth more than your actual balance, thus allowing you to make huge profits from these huge trades. Of course, they neglect to mention the fact that leverage can also cause huge losses, to the point of killing your entire account in one night and sometimes a few minutes or seconds.

The fact of the matter is that despite the availability of leverage in the forex market, most successful traders handle it very carefully, and may not use it at all. Most of the leveraged traders invest in a single trade no more than 2.5% to 5% of the account balance. Of course, this is a very small percentage, but it achieves the desired security. Thus, the amount of profits that you can make during a certain period depends on the number of trades that you will open during this period and also how successful they are. Realistically speaking, successful forex traders would be happy if they could make a return of 5% to 10% per month!

Does this mean that you cannot make a greater return? No, of course, but the point is to make your expectations realistic and be wary of distant illusions. You may win 1000% in a week, but only if you get lucky at the gambling table - and after a week you will lose that 1000% and maybe more. Would you be happy if you made such huge returns in a week or two and then all the profits evaporated in the following week, or is it better to make small profits but at a steady pace until you eventually reach the accumulation of return and the increase of the balance in the long run? You cannot build your life on illogical speculations, but you can make enough income through continuous trading in the forex market.

So how can you increase your winnings without gambling? One way to achieve this is to open more trading positions. However, the quality of the deals you intend to make should not be compromised as you should be limited to those with the best odds of success. In other words, the only way to increase trades is to follow more currency pairs or find more opportunities on the same pairs by looking at faster time frames. However, we recommend again to be careful when trading on the fast time frames because it is a completely different environment and the previous evidence confirms that the profitability of the novice traders is much better on the slower time frames.

Forex trading requires a lot of patience, unless you are starting with a huge capital, so you should be happy to make a monthly profit of 5% to 10%. Remember that, in theory, you may experience exceptional profit growth at a given moment, but real and sustainable growth requires sustained long-term profitability. So a 5-10% return with the virtues of patience and discipline will achieve your goal in the long run. And if you feel that you need to speed things up, you can resort to increasing your balance rather than compromising discipline.