Bitcoin Forum

I wonder if some of you trade with very low amounts like $60 in BTC. Is there a chance that you can maximize that small amount by trading?

I tried doing so some months ago - just a small test amount, to see how I'd do. I did manage to increase it by some 5% - 10%, but not only do fees start getting to you with low amounts (though that depends on where you're doing the trading), but you also have less of a room to maneuver if something goes wrong. So, it might be riskier than it's worth.

Anyway, I'm far from being a professional trader, or even a good one for that matter, so don't take my word for it. :D

That's why I ask. I tried trading on btc-e and gained some small pennie amounts too but then I decided to send my bits back to my wallet. I thought it would be way too risky, as you said, you have not much room to play with it. But same as you, I am just someone who tried, who has no idea about trading.

The fees are flat so it doesn't really matter.

I think trading with small amounts is fine as you get to learn about the market.  And there is still plenty of potential for profit.

Check out trading futures on okcoin.com .  You can utilize up to 20x leverage.

I think your best best is just to give it a try.  Since you're talking about a small initial investment you might have fun and learn something too. 

I played around with trading at even lower stakes than you are talking about and I can tell that I found it frustrating to try to keep up with all the movements and altcoins and whatnot---then, as you said, the fees.  So it didn't work out for me but you might have better luck.

Go Chinese if you want to avoid fees. I dunno if the numbers can be trusted at all, but zero fees are a fine idea. I've only dabbled in piddly amounts. More often than not I failed miserably so it all panned out fine.

That's a disasterous combination.

If fees aren't an issue then a good trading system will work with big or small amounts. Try and find one, read, understand, then risk your money, not the other way round.
Do trades 'on paper' until a system proves itself.
As they say "Only risk what you can afford to lose".

Its a good idea as a starting point. I used to do the same too, and then slowly increased the amount as I gained more confidence and the ability to close a losing trade eating the losses.

A 10% gain is 10% gain no matter how much you decide to trade with. Trading with $60 is no different than trading with $60k except it's easier to get in/out once your target (or stop-loss) is reached. If that's all your risk tolerance allows, then so be it. Profit is profit and you can't bitch about profit no matter how small it is. The only regret when you're winning is that you didn't risk more, but this can also be a good thing if you make consistent losses. Even those small wins eventually add up if you win more then lose.

Since fees are percentage based, it doesn't matter as long as you factor the fees in. If you buy at 290, make sure you sell above 292.90 (1%) minimum. That accounts for round trip fees and you are at least a little better off than before you started. Obviously you'll want to go for bigger gains, but use that as a minimum or "break-even" trade.


Good advice^

Anything is possible, but dont expect high margins.

Unless you know something that most dont, and everyone looks at the same information. Have you had experience in day trading?

Go to war, with a gun?

Or go to war, with a nuke? both will win you battles, but its about lessing your casualty referencing to your money.

As long as fees are percentage based then you are right, however I'm pretty sure that I ran up against issues where the fee was X at minimum and then Y% when  Y% was greater than X, ie a minimum fee.  If you have minimum fees to run up against then trading in micro amounts can indeed be different than larger ones.  Nevertheless, the spirit of your post is quite correct and I agree.

Low amounts is more easy actually. You can move your entire balance for one price. Far less planning ahead needed.

So what RyNinDaCleM said.

Ok, there are no smaller parts of $0.01 so there is a minimum fee, but .1BTC is under $30 so a $60 position should be well within those minimums. Stamp, BFX, BTC-e for sure is purely percentage based with a minimum .01 or .1 BTC trade (I don't remember which). Chinese exchanges are zero fee, but charge fees for withdrawals (so not free trading when they may charge what you earn when you try to move your profits off exchange). I don't use coinbase exchange or kraken so I couldn't tell you about those.

If there were larger minimum fees then there would be no bots because bots trade tiny amounts, many many times to make many small profits.

trade with 1BTC ... nothing less.
and you must have like 8-12 BTC to do balance over weeks.

You need to trade on non-fee exchanges like Chinese exchanges or that fee would make your trading unprofitable.60$ isn't much, and due to market turmoil, you could lose money for frequent trading, frequent trading is not recommend.

at this moment i am also trading with low amounts which happens to be around $100
i gained about 12% this month. not much for most people but decent enough for me.

as someone who is a beginner in trading i tell you that it is alright to trade small amounts, just pay attention to the fees. as long as you are trading more than fee amount and profiting it is alright.
i started with the smallest amount possible for trading and build my way up. it helped me gain confidence while learning about how and when to trade to gain profit.

Back in the days, I would get myself about 20 bucks and buy up some altcoins which already had extremely low prices. I would then put up a sell wall at a price 2-5x higher than that in the hopes someone might pump the coin one day. Here I am today with huge profits.

$60 is not a "low" amount, it's a "micro" amount. Don't bother. Move to an alt-coin, like dogecoin, and play there. You will have a much greater impact and opportunity.

Just pay attention that the fees don't eat you up and make sure you don't fall for the Martingale system which, in Gambling, requires you to double your bet (investment) in case your position goes down.

In fact its WAY better when you start with such a low amount. Starting with higher amounts will make you lose everything fast. Because you need experience for this.

Trading bitcoins with low amounts is doable much better than in fiat markets because exchanges here have fixed fees. So it doesnt matter how much you trade. Except you get some discounts later maybe.

Next thing is that its easier to make a profit because the orderbooks might be not so deep. With low amounts you trade on the top of orderbooks. With big amounts you might buy deep into the orderbook. Or you build a wall to be broken.

So yes... trade and await to lose it. But you will learn from it. Better is though to first learn and then risk real money.

It probably won't make much difference if you are trading in small amounts but however, if there is a high volatility, you can actually make a nice profit from the swing probably up to 3 - 4 rounds in just a day. Also sometimes, there is special scenario like for example newly launched coins whereby you can expect like almost a 50% movement in one single day.

Why is it a problem to start of with <100$, some whales were also trading with ~100$ few years back, and are trading 10x the amount now..
If you think you can predict the market well enough, u could increase your investment faster by compunding each time, but every loss is bigger then also.
I dont see why all the hate to small players, bitcoin started off from that.

cheers

You may want to try altcoin trading, if you are able to swallow the risk involved. Many coins do have total market cap that is in order of ssingle digits in Bitcoin. $60 would be altered something there. But be warned of the risk there. You may multiply your portfolio but you may as well lose it all, at no news.

It's the thing that fucks with the market more than whales, people see 10$ rise and they dump in order to profit few dollars. Multiple times a day!!

I wouldn't expect much volatility in this type of trend reversal we are witnessing now for Bitcoin. It is not a V-shaped bottom to get large swings. Volatility will come to BTC once the uptrend is firmly established and there is more positive news in the mainstream media.

+1

Everyone makes mistakes to begin with and learning from them gives you the experience to stop making them. Make your mistakes with small amounts of money and learn from them before you risk big amounts of money.

Depends on the reason you're doing this.

If it's for profit, no. I mean how much profit can you make on 60 dollars? It's probably not going to be higher than if you just worked at a job.

If it's just for fun, or to learn something, then yes. If you end up losing money, you can think of it as buying a game for xbox or paying a small tuition or something.

do you seriously think that $60 investment and amounts like that has any effect in a 22 million dollar day to day volume market?

+1

Small traders traders can provide liquidity for markets, they are the grease that oils the big wheels.

This is what I was playing around with and I basically found it too frustrating to keep up with.  Too many scamcoins and sillynesses and I just didn't have the time or energy or interest to try to figure out what was what.  But for someone who's more connected to trends and keeps on top of that kinda stuff anyway it might indeed be a fun way to get started.

I think most would end up going batty attempting to trade alts. Apart from a few, the markets are too minute and are under the control of a handful of scum bags.

Buying $1 of every coin on a market would end up paying off the same as spending every second running around the markets.

Agree wholeheartedly.  I gave up trying to follow that shit.  I'm a happier person now :)

I tried that and stopped, simply because I suck at trading ;D and you need to be really focused on it, and on top of the news all the time.
I think it's a good idea though! You get real life trading experience and might win something, while not risking too much. I will consider doing it during my vacation time :)

With a good analysis and use scalping techniques I think its possible.

too much work i think(too stressful also, unless this is done with a bot), and too costly in fee, but it could be done, in any case it's always better to play with big amount(proportional to your bankroll)

now that i think about it, with a bot can be done easily without losing too much in fees

Yep, but I thinkthe problem is that the market is not that volatile anymore :)

well, that is an important aspect to take into account. You should have some trading experience when trading altcoins, otherwise you will have to spend some time and BTC learning it - which may be not what you want. I simply recommended looking at altcoins, as there is much more volatility involved there. More volatility means more stress as well, as you may lose quicker all what you have at stake. Meaning only play money, if any, should be put there!

I do altcoin trading only and my problem is it's difficult to trade with big quantities of money because the volumes are not big enough to sell at good prices. For example trading with 10 BTC alone can start being a pain in the ass. You buy tons of a cheap altcoin, worth 10 BTC. Wait for a pump, then you intend to sell at the top but there isn't enough people to buy all the cheap coins you bought for 10 BTC. So you are pretty limited to stablished coins which are few, like Monero, Litecoin, or the other few that have a decent amount of volume.

That is indeed, a very important problem that I also noticed. Whereas there are only few coins with a chunky 24hour volume (50BTC+), usually most of the coins are trading at 10BTC or lower volume. Meaning you may trade with small amounts, but once you become big, the space for further gains is very limited.

Short term trading is still profitable if you know how to, and got some luck.

i do altcoin trading too, because i was able to profit more from trading altcoin than trading bitcoin. but i am still a beginner and still learning stuff.
i have the same problem as you, that the trade volume mostly is not big enough for big profits. so i try to invest in a couple of coins so the sum is big, but it is too much work...

Isn't altcoin trading most efficient when there's a bubble bursting and you effectively only have to short on max leverage to make a quick buck!? :D

You are so off topic with that quote above oblivi, the question was does trading with low amounts make sense?

Not how trading with 10btc in altcoins is a pain in the ass but trading small amounts of bitcoin, does it make sense?

Yes op to me it is worth it but not for good profit but to get used to what you are doing it is always good to start small and if you go in nice profit then even better but after fee's and potential small losses i would not do if for profit but for experience.