[Full history公開！] I turned 50,000 yen into 1,000,000 yen!

Hello! This is SAKU!

A few years ago, I was running a personal blog about trading (it is now closed), and at that time I ran a challenge to aim for 1,000,000 yen from a small starting fund!

This time, I was able to dig up articles and images from that small-money challenge, so I decided to write an article hoping it would be helpful to readers!

I'll also include all of my trading history from that period!

Please take note of the cautions, fund progression, and lot sizes when increasing funds with a small starting amount!

*The articles are generally kept as they were on the blog at the time, with appropriate additions.

I deposited 50,000 yen for now

For this challenge, I used an overseas account that I had opened before but mostly neglected (GEM FOREX, a now-defunct overseas broker).

Normally I trade mainly with domestic accounts, but I had noticed on Twitter (back then, now X) that many people were doing small-challenge trades with overseas accounts, and I wondered how it would actually be, plus I seem to have won a 100% deposit bonus on that neglected overseas account, so I decided to try this small-money challenge.

My basic stance is negative toward high-leverage trading with overseas accounts, but since you won’t know until you try, I treated this as more of an experiment and decided to give it a go.

So for now I deposited just 50,000 yen, and started with 100,000 yen in margin after adding the 50,000 yen bonus (total margin 100,000 yen).

For those who have little starting capital, using bonuses or campaigns from FX companies can be a good idea.

By the way, there is no particular reason I set the starting capital to 50,000 yen. It was just what happened to be in my wallet.

In the image below, “Balance” is 50,000 yen, and “Credit” is the bonus 50,000 yen. (The final profit and loss was about 1,013,720 yen in about a month and a half.)

Prerequisites for this challenge

For this challenge, I laid out some basic prerequisites, and I’ll touch on them briefly as well.

Here’s a rough outline:

• Margin: 100,000 yen starting cash + 100,000 yen deposit bonus = 200,000 yen total
• If the margin runs out, it ends (no top-ups)
• Trading style: day to semi-swing
• Leverage up to about 50x at most
• Trading currencies: USD/JPY, GBP/JPY, gold
• Charts and operations only on the smartphone app

So this is how I decided to proceed.

Since this challenge is largely experimental, I decided at the outset to stop gracefully if the margin ran out and focus on my usual trading, and I made a personal rule not to add more funds even if the margin decreased.

Also, my usual trading is swing trading a few times a month, but starting with a small margin would take too long, so this time I focused on day trading with occasional scalping.

Although my domestic accounts usually cap at around 15x leverage, I sometimes use up to about 50x leverage with overseas accounts (domestic limits are up to 25x).

I’m still figuring this out in the early stages.

For the technical methods I use, as introduced on this blog, I combine MTF analysis, trendline analysis, price action analysis, and volume analysis, and I rarely use other indicators.

※ The restriction to smartphone apps is solely for my personal experiment, so I don’t recommend copying it. Analyzing on a PC chart without taking the easy route is definitely better.

Trading history

For this experiment, since I’m mainly a swing trader, there were a very large number of trades, so it’s impossible to cover each one in detail. I’ll include the trading history below.

Starting on March 19 (2021) with goal of 1,000,000 yen achieved on May 6(2021), so it took about a month and a half.

By the way, there are sections where the history shows losses and some sizable drawdowns, but this includes some positions managed with a somewhat special technique called “catch-and-release” (a type of carry trade), so not all losses are pure stop-outs.

Taking that into account, the win rate over this period is roughly in the 70–80% range.

Capital progression

I’ve also included a graph of the capital progression.

Initially the lot sizes were small and I was mostly uncertain, so it was nearly flat, but once I surpassed 200,000 yen, it started increasing quite nicely.

Of course there were losing trades as well, so it rose and fell, but it gradually climbed as a gentle uptrend in capital.

Impressions and cautions

Now I’ll write what I felt while trading with overseas accounts on a small amount and cautions for anyone who wants to try it.

Frustration when capital doesn’t grow

First of all, this is it.

Starting with a small amount, in the early stages even if I won, the gains were only a few thousand to around 10,000 yen, which was frustrating.

Since normally I aim for tens of thousands of yen in a single trade as swing trading, this was tough.

Be careful not to over-leverage!

That said, if you lose your nerve and suddenly crank up leverage, you could get wiped out, so I focused on protecting funds and managing positions steadily to grow little by little.

Gold, in particular, is not something I trade often, and it’s highly volatile, so I paid extra attention to position management.

Also, overseas accounts have wider spreads, so raising leverage too much can cause a decent loss just from spreads.

Consider capital efficiency

Raising leverage too much is a problem, but too-low leverage also reduces capital efficiency, so I adjusted lot sizes in line with capital changes and managed funds accordingly.