You say that 10K is the minimum account size that you recommend for trading along with Wanderer Financial. Why do you say that?

We do recommend a trading account minimum of $10,000. Part of the way that we control risk with our trades is through the selection of trade size, which is a percentage of your entire trade portfolio. With a $10,000 account we might make a trade in a stock that is $40.00 per share with a trade size of 10%. That would mean that you should risk $1,000, which buys you 25 shares of that stock. If we were to make 10% on the trade, a $10,000 account would make $100. That's 1% of the overall account, which would be a nice return for a single trade. However, you can see how the numbers would look if the account were smaller. $5,000 account would make $50—still 1% of the acct, but subtract a few dollars for commissions, and suddenly it takes many more good trades in order to cover expenses and become profitable on the year. The smaller the account, the more sizable chunk of each trade the expenses take on a percentage basis.

Note that as of the end of 2019 just about every brokerage has gone to zero commission stock trading fees. If your broker is still charging you to trade stocks you may want to look for a new one. A couple that we recommend are Tastyworks and eTrade.

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