If You Only Have $50, Do This Every Morning

Last week, I made a little over $20,000 trading, only taking trades for less than 90 minutes a day. But, when I started trading over 7 years ago, I didn't start risking thousands of dollars. I started with only $1,000, risking $30 to $50 per trade. The goal wasn't to get rich overnight. It was to build a repeatable system with a positive edge. Learn how to trade with minimal risk, build consistency, and then look to slowly scale up over time. In this video, I'm going to show you exactly how I would start from scratch if my goal was to build a small account. We'll cover the strategy, risk management, and step-by-step process [music] on exactly how I scale up over time. Let's get into it. So, in today's video, I'm going to talk about how to start trading with just $30 to $50 worth of risk per trade. And this was me over 5 years ago. I was risking on average $30 to $50 per trade. I was a break-even {slash} losing trader at the time, and I was just trying to find some consistency in the markets. And as you can see, I was a break-even trader for about a year until I found some consistency, and then I was able to scale my trading account from $3,000 to over $50,000 within 2 and 1/2 months, only starting off with risking $30 per trade. And now I risk closer to $3,000 per trade. And this is my current month-to-date P&L for June 2026. And I'm up over $70,000 this month trading alone. And what I want to mention is that I've been trading for the past 7 years, and I lost for years in the markets until I was able to develop a consistent edge and strategy in the markets, where I could start risking a very minimal amount and then slowly building consistency over time. And in today's video, I'm going to share with you exactly what I would do if I was to start over today risking just $30 to $50 per trade. And the goal of today's video is to show you how to grow a small account in trading. And the one simple answer to grow a small account is to simply risk more money. But what we have to understand is that when we're risking more money, it also comes with more drawdown. Most people see the big P&L, they see the $1,000 trades, but what you have to ask is how much you're risking per trade. One of the biggest things to understand is this graph right here, which is on the right-hand side. It's comparing the drawdown percentage to the return to get back to break even. So, whatever money you put into the markets, understand that there is going to be drawdown and there is risk associated with trading. And understanding the percent recovery is more important. The bigger the hole, the harder it is to climb out. The compounding effect goes both ways. So, we hear about the compounding effect all the time, compounding your gains and looking for consistency over and over. But what happens when you're a loser {slash} unprofitable trader? You can actually get into quite a bit of drawdown and then it's going to be harder to dig yourself out of. And then, too many traders risk too much when they start losing. A lot of times when you start losing in the markets, you can get emotional. You can start doubling your size, revenge trading, trying to get the money back. And what does that ultimately lead to? It ultimately leads you to being in huge drawdown, and that just makes it so much harder for you to become a profitable trader. So, as you can see here, if you're down 5%, all it takes is just 5.3% to get back to break even. But if you're down 20%, it takes 25% to get back to break even. Let's say you're down 50%, it takes 100% to get back to break even. And if you're down 90%, it's going to take over 900% to get back to break even. And understanding this is very important to start off because no matter what strategy you trade, if you don't have risk management, ultimately you're going to be a losing trader. All it takes is one to two bad trading days or bad trading weeks and you can wipe out months worth of gains. So now we understand why risk plays such a big factor in our trading. Let's talk about some different types of trading instruments that we can be looking to trade. Number one what we have is stocks, options, futures. There's plenty of different other trading instruments out there, but these are the three primary trading instruments that we're going to be focusing on today. Number one, stocks. What are some of the pros? It's liquid, regulated, easy to understand, low to moderate risk. And then number three, can build wealth long term through ownership. What are some of the cons? High capital requirement, limited leverage compared to other markets, and there's set trading hours. Options. Low capital to control large positions, defined risk, flexible strategies. What are some of the cons? Complex due to all the Greeks that are affecting the actual contract's price. Cons, time decay, theta is working against you, and also requires a very strong understanding. Futures. High leverage, nearly 24 hours a day, five days a week, tight spreads and lots of liquidity. And what are some of the cons? It can be risky due to the high leverage and it's not as ideal if you want to hold for longer term positions. And what we want to be focusing on primarily today is we're going to be focusing on stocks and options. Futures is also a viable options as well. The strategy that I use to grow small account works better on stocks and options. If you guys would like me to make a video on futures, let me know in the comment section below and I'll make a full in-depth guide talking about futures and how to trade them effectively. So, with that being said, let's talk about how to find the right stocks to trade. In finding the right stocks is to simply understand a couple things. Number one, the broader market. As you can see what we have pulled up is the S&P 500, which is also ticker symbol spy, and it holds 500 of the biggest companies in the world. QQQ, which is holding 100 of the biggest tech companies. This is heavily weighted on the tech sector. So, the stocks that are within these tech names are the ones that we're going to be focusing on. So, as you can see what we have here is a basket of stocks that are within the QQQ. So, as you can see right here, we have the top biggest holdings of the QQQ. We have Nvidia, we have tickers like Apple, Micron, Microsoft, Amazon, AMD, Tesla, Google, Broadcom. There's so many different names within the spy and QQQ, and the main ones we want to be focusing on are the ones that are leading the markets higher. So, the ones that have relative strength compared to the QQQ. So, let's say for example, the QQQ is the red line, and we're rising towards the upside. We're going to have tech names like Nvidia, which is rising higher. We're going to have names like AMD, which could be lagging the overall markets, or names like Tesla that can be lagging the markets as well. We want to be focusing on names that have strength. And the names that have strength right now currently are the tech names. AMD, Intel, MU. Those are the names that we want to be focusing on because those have the highest probability of continuing higher if the market wants to go higher. If we're focused on names like Tesla for example, and it's weaker compared to the markets, if the Qs rises, and Tesla's not rising, what makes you think that if the Qs is dropping, is Tesla all of a sudden going to rise? It's very unlikely. So, we want to focus on names with strength, and there's a simple way to understand which names have strength, and we're going to talk about that here in a second. Now, we understand the basket of stocks that we want to choose. Talk about the stock options and what options we want to be taking if we want to grow a small account. So, as you can see right here, what we have pulled up is an option chain. And this right here is something that you can find on most brokers. It might not look exactly like this, but most brokers are going to have an option chain which you can look to pick options from. In this case, what I have pulled up is MU. MU right now is worth over a thousand dollars per share, and that's why if you scroll down the option contracts are going to be fairly expensive. As you can see right here, what we have on the left-hand side is calls. On the right-hand side, we have puts. What we see right above it is the expiration. So, what we can choose here is the expiration date, essentially meaning the closer to the expiration, that means the contracts are going to expire. The further out really means it's going to be more safer because you have more time till expiration. One thing about options is that there's something called theta decay. So, the closer to expiration, the more riskier it is. And right down the middle, what we have is our strike price. Looking at this option chain right here, as you can see right here, MU is currently worth $1,151 per share. On the left-hand side, what we have is calls. Everything in the white is out the money calls. Everything in this blue shaded area, it's a little bit harder to see, is in the money calls. And then when we're talking about puts, everything in the white is going to be out the money, and everything in the blue is going to be in the money calls. When we're looking for day trading opportunities, generally speaking, we want to be taking one out the money calls which is expiring this week. So, if I was to trade MU, I would choose the closest expiration and I would choose one out the money. And that is for day trading and quick momentum moves in the market. If I'm looking to swing trade or hold trades for a longer position, I'm going to buy time. So, I'm going to choose two weeks out. I can choose three weeks out, four weeks out, but I'm just going to choose something that's a little bit longer in expiration. And then as for my strike price, I'm going to choose the one where my target is. So, let's say my target in this case for a swing trade is 1180. I'm going to choose the 1180 calls or I potentially can choose the 1200 calls. These are the ones that we can look to buy that of course have the most upside because they're out the money. Right now, if I was to click on the 1160 calls here on MU, as you can see, the contracts are fairly expensive. Right now, the contracts are worth $91. And of course, if you multiply that by 100, that's over $9,000 per one contract. And of course, that is not small account friendly. The spread, if we're looking at MU right now from the bid to the ask, is already $5. So, that is very unlikely that you're going to be looking to trade this because the risk in itself is over $500 cuz that's just the spread and we're not accounting slippage and everything else. So, a ticker like MU is not small account friendly. At one point, MU was $300 per share. That was about two months ago. Now, it's about three times as more expensive. So, if we're looking for names to risk only 30 to $50, we have to trade names like Nvidia, Apple, the names that are cheaper on the underlying so we can manage risk a little bit more effectively. If your account starts to grow and you start to compound and you have a buffer, then you can look to play names that are a little bit more expensive. So, now with that being said, we understand which basket of stocks to trade. We understand which option contracts to trade as well. So, now with that being said, what stocks are we looking for in specific that have the best momentum moves? In number one, it starts with names that are in an uptrend. In this case, what we're going to be focusing in here is on the daily chart, and we want to be focusing on trends that are higher. In this case, we're building higher highs, higher lows, higher highs, and we're having this nice push towards the upside. What are two basic confluences that we can add on to our charts to let us know how strong of a trend that we're in. Number one, an EMA, in this case, a 9 EMA, and we can also put the 21 EMA on our charts. If we're in a bullish uptrend and price is above the 9 EMA and above the 21 EMA, that is the most bullish case scenario. Below the 9 EMA, above the 21 EMA, that's still bullish. And of course, if we're below the 9 and below the 21, that means we're neutral {slash} bearish. And the two trading scenarios that we want to be focusing on is of course the most bullish case, above the 9 and 21, below the 9 and above the 21, but we don't want to be focusing on names that are below the 9 and below the 21. So, with that being said, we understand which stocks to focus on and which options that we can look to choose. Now, let's hop on to the charts to show you guys exactly what this looks like. All right, so as you can see, we're on my first example, which is on Intel, INTC, currently on the daily time frame. And as you can see, we have our 9 and 21 EMA marked out on the charts. Currently, we are forming this daily flag pattern here as well. We're pushing higher, we're now consolidating, forming this daily flag pattern. We're also flipping back above the 9 and 21 EMA here now as well. So, what we're going to be looking for is a potential break above. If we can break outside our previous day's range, break above our previous day highs here as well, we can be looking for this continued push back towards the upside, targeting that all-time highs. Coming into market open, the key levels that we can have marked out, of course, is going to be that previous day highs. If we do want to see some upside here in the markets, above our previous day highs hold for that continued push towards the upside. So, as you can see right off the bat within the first 15 minutes of market open, we're pushing towards the upside here. What we're going to be looking for on INTC is really the break above retest for a continuation towards the upside. So, as you can see right here on INTC, we're pushing towards the upside, we're maintaining above our 5-minute range high. The 5-minute time frame, as you can see right here now as well, buyers are stepping in and we're closing back above our previous day high. So, this one is reclaiming back above here. This is exactly where we can go looking long with the stop loss just a break underneath. We can look to target high day plus continuation back towards the upside. In this case, we look to take shares just to make it nice and easy and to explain it to us, but if we were to take the option contracts, which I did in this case, I would take the 120 calls on INTC looking for high day plus continuation back towards the upside. And as you can see right there on INTC, we end up getting that nice bounce right off our previous day highs. Solid push up and towards our key levels and above, eventually hitting our take profit for continuation. If we were to trade the stock, we ended up getting a roughly a four-point move on the underlying. If we were to trade the option contract, for example, and were to trade one out the money contract, we would have made roughly $2 per contract with a 0.5 delta. If we were to trade one contract, we could have made $2 per contract. So, let's say the contracts were roughly $3 a contract, that could have went to a total of $5. So, we could have turned $300 in this case to $500 and our risk would be roughly $2 on the underlying. So, in this case, we would be risking around $100 to make $200. Now, of course, if your risk was a little bit tighter and you were on the 1-minute time frame, you could have had a tighter stop loss as well. So, with that being said, let's go on to the next example that I have. All right, so as you can see, we're on the very next day here on INTC and as I mentioned, we recently broke out of this daily flag pattern and we end up having a nice strong candle close. So, for INTC coming to market open, if we can break above our previous day highs, the next level that we're going to have is going to be all the way towards our all-time highs key area, which is 130 here. So, if you go back on to the lower time frames, the key levels coming to market open is simply just going to be that previous day highs and all we're looking for is a hold of our previous day highs, looking for a push back up in towards our pre-market highs and our all-time highs here on INTC. So, as you can see right here on INTC within the very first minute, we pushed down in towards our previous day highs. Nice buyers are stepping in right off this level. Now, what we like to see is really any sort of bullish price action. So, we're building up higher lows here on the 1-minute time frame. Now, we're actually reclaiming back above key levels that we have marked out. So, right here, this is the exact candle that INTC reclaims back above our opening print plus our pre-market high here as well. I personally entered in on this candle right here, which is at 9:41 with the stop loss at break underneath. I entered as this candle was forming and now I'm looking to target back towards the upside. And as you can see right there, INTC we end up getting that nice push all the way up in towards our all-time time key area. We actually ended up rejecting right before that all time highs. This right here was a good example of using those higher time frames and just looking for continuation towards the upside. As I mentioned, this would have netted you roughly around four points on the underlying. And of course, if you were to trade the option contract once again, you would have made roughly $2 per contract if you're trading the one out of the money weekly cons. So, as you can see, we're on my next example, which is on MU, currently on the daily time frame. And as you can see, we're above the nine, we're above the 21. Right now, we're at our all time highs. What we'd like to see here on MU is a break above our all time highs for continuation towards the upside. So, if you can break above our key level, that is a good sign for continuation towards the highs. Key levels that I have marked out on MU today is going to be our previous day highs that I like to see turn into support for continuation back towards the upside. As you can see right here, so far, MU is coming back down into our previous day highs key level. What we'd like to see is if buyers can step in. Right here, this is where we can go look long on MU. Buyers are stepping in very nicely right off that previous day high level. Stop can be a break underneath our previous day highs, and we can look to target for a push back towards the upside. And as you can see right there on MU, we end up getting that nice push right towards the upside, right off of course that previous day highs. In this case here on MU, we're risking roughly around 20 points on the underlying, and we ended up making over 30 points on the underlying itself. So, if you were to trade MU one out of the money contract on a weekly with a 0.5 delta, you could have roughly made $15,000 on one single contract. But, you have to remember once again that MU is very expensive. Of course, you wouldn't be risking 30 to $50. You would have been risking closer to $3,000 What matters more here is the percentage in the actual trade in itself. When you start out, you're risking closer to $30, and once you build consistency, once you build a buffer, then you can look to scale your account, and then that's when you can start scaling up to $300 to $500 risk per trade, all the way up to $3,000 risk per trade. So, understand the actual dollar amount in itself doesn't matter. It's all relative to where you start trading. Once you build up that consistency, it's that compounding effect, and then you can look to scale and build up your account from there. With that being said, I hope you guys enjoyed this video today. If you did, appreciate if you guys drop a like and sub. With that being said, I'll see you guys next week for a brand new video. Peace.