The markets, judged one by one

Forex: should a beginner start here?

The door with the widest gap between what is advertised ($5) and what is computed ($1,000).

Facts checked on October 22, 2026

The computed numbers for this door

The base unit: a micro lot (0.01) on a major pair like EUR/USD, with a normal beginner stop of 30 pips, risks about $3 per trade. The $1 cost per trade is the retail spread plus slippage at micro size — wider, proportionally, than the 'from 0.0 pips' headline.

Risk term: $3.00 × 100 = $300. Cost term: about $20 a month in trading costs at beginner frequency (20 trades), which needs $1,000 of capital to stay under 2% a month. Minimum viable capital: $1,000. Survival floor: $75 — below it, one normal trade risks more than 4% of the account.

The brokers beginners meet first advertise minimum deposits of $0–$10 (HFM $0, XM $5, FBS $5, Exness $10 — their published minimums, checked October 2026). That is what they will accept, not what a beginner needs.

Who this door is for

You can trade the hours when the major pairs actually move, and you will keep position size at micro lots until the journal says otherwise.
You live where a real regulator publishes a loss figure and caps leverage — and you intend to be served by an entity that regulator actually supervises.

Who it is not for

You are starting with $50–$200 because a broker's page called that a plan. At that size one normal micro-lot trade risks 2–6% of the account; the mechanics, not your talent, decide the first months.
You were routed here by a 'bypass the $25,000 rule' pitch. Forex never had the PDT rule — the pitch is a funnel, and what it routes you to is leverage.

The trap in this door

The trap is the entity switch. The brand name on the ad may be regulated in Europe — while the account a beginner from your country actually gets sits with an offshore entity, at up to 500:1 leverage, with no compensation scheme if the firm fails. The leverage cap that protects EU clients (30:1 on majors) and the loss warning the firm must print there do not travel with the logo. Check which legal entity would hold your money before any deposit — that is a different question from 'is this brand regulated somewhere,' and it is the question nobody in the funnel asks you.

The first honest step

Run the checker with your region set honestly. Your verdict prints your regulator's loss figure — in Europe, 74–89% of retail CFD accounts lose money — and the capital at which a micro-lot stop stops being 3% of your account.

Run the checker with your numbers See the full dataset

The family · CheckBeforeDeposit

Before any deposit

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.

Before you start, take the whole path

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

See the 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.