If I only had £1000 to play with I would spreadbet £1pp on IG Index daily gold end of day trading. Its the easiest and cheapest instrument and would give almost unlimited chances to try different technical analysis setups. It would teach patience, self discipline and courage to place trades and take profits. The amounts of money involved are so small you would have little to lose. The problem is that most would be traders will find they don’t have patience, discipline or courage. Sad but true.
If you don’t have much funds then start small and try to build up your trading account over time. Try to get a trading method on which you could build up slowly, say if you had a consistent month at £1 pp next month step it up to £2 pp and so on, if you had a bad month go back down to the last £ value. Try to concentrate on protecting your money and only trade opportunities with a favourable risk/reward.
I have about 2000 pounds of cash which I don’t mind losing and I’d like to take high risk trades in return for high rewards…
You don’t mind losing your £2000? Go and play blackjack or play roulette! Trading is mostly about psychology and if you start risking money with the wrong mindset, odds are that you WILL lose and you WILL mind about losing the money in the end.
Note: I think you have to define what you expect from trading. I believe a common myth is that we can sit in front of a computer and make quick easy money spread betting the markets. If you want to make serious dosh with little working capital then forget it – it won’t happen or at least its very unlikely to happen. If you want to slowly build up longer term wealth then everyone can do it as its very similar to running a business.
“If you only have £1,000 to trade you might be better off trading with very small amounts. Experienced traders rarely risk more than 1-2% of their overall pot on any trade. So if you are trading with a £1,000 balance, a 1% risk could cost you £10.