How much money
First the map, then the money: for a large share of this site's readers, the honest answer is that this door is closed.
Facts checked on October 22, 2026
A CFD is a contract with a firm, not an asset: you trade the movement of an index, a commodity or a share, leveraged, against the firm's own prices. That structure is legal and regulated for retail clients in the UK, the EU and Australia — and not offered to US retail clients under US law. Everything below assumes the door is open where you live; the checker enforces that order automatically.
Computed minimum viable capital for cfds (indices, gold, oil): $1,250 (risk term $500 · cost term $1,250 · about $25 a month of costs at beginner frequency). Survival floor: $125. The smallest sensible index or gold position, with a stop that respects the instrument's normal movement, risks about $5; spread and overnight financing at beginner frequency run about $25 a month, which sets the cost term — and the minimum — at $1,250.
In Europe and the UK, CFD firms must publish the percentage of their retail clients who lose money, in a standard warning, updated at least quarterly. The range across the industry is the ESMA figure: 74–89% of retail CFD accounts lose money, average loss €1,600–€29,000 per client. ASIC's Australian measurement is 68% net losers after fees. A firm whose own number is at the bad end of that range is telling you, in its own words, what its product does to accounts like yours.
Caps by regulator: 30:1 on major forex pairs, 20:1 on major indices and gold, 2:1 on crypto in the EU/UK; 30:1 in Australia. The offshore version of the same brand may offer 500:1 under a different legal entity with no compensation scheme behind it. The cap printed on the ad is a property of the entity, not the logo.
A CFD is a bet with the firm that sold it to you. When the firm's client-loss percentage and the firm's marketing disagree about your prospects, believe the percentage — the firm was required to measure it.
Run the checker with your numbers
The family · CheckBeforeDeposit
Before any deposit: which entity holds your money, and does your regulator warn? CheckBeforeDeposit computes your country × broker pair — the entity that would hold the account, your own regulator's warning status, and the minimum that is actually viable on your payment rails.
The verdict gives you the arithmetic for your market and your capital. The Start-or-Wait Kit gives you the complete workbook: the demo-record audit (the 50-trade review grid), the staged capital plan up to your market's minimum viable capital, the 90-day learning plan week by week, and the real-cost tracker — the spreadsheet experienced traders build by hand, ready to fill in.
Included in the $39 Start-or-Wait Kit
Sources: FINRA Regulatory Notice 26-10 (April 20, 2026) and the brokers' own pages for the PDT tracker; ESMA Decision (EU) 2018/796 and the AMF restatement for European CFD loss figures; ASIC Report 828 (FY2023–24) for Australia; CFTC retail forex materials for the United States; Barber, Lee, Liu & Odean (Taiwan market data) and Chague & De Losso (Brazil) for day-trading outcomes; the FPFX Technology dataset of 300,000+ prop-firm accounts, reported by Finance Magnates (2024); broker-published minimum deposits and margin schedules as dated on the dataset page. If a figure has moved since our check date, the issuer's own publication wins — and write to help@doogex.com so we can correct ours.