you can open a live account with as little as $10... I started with $100, doubled it in about 3 hours on my first 'live' day, built it to over $15 000, I did howerever do some 'risky' trades to get to that point, but hey, I started with $100... If you get into it, I suggest going with a demo account (it takes about 5 minutes to set one up online)and practicing for a couple of weeks to get the hang of it, but if you been into stocks for a while you should have no problem adapting, its the same thing, it just moves faster because you don't have to wait for your bids to fill, one click and you are out... you also do LOTS of trades for small gains or losses that all add up throughout the day... for me a red day is if I only gained 1% of my total account balance by the end my trading session, but then, I'm usually up 1% in my first 15 mins...