What are mini accounts?

Mini accounts are one of the several kinds of accounts available for potential Forex traders. The major difference mini accounts have from the others is the smaller and more controllable size of trades they are allowed to do.

 

A standard account in the Forex traditionally buys or sells currency pairs in multiples of 100,000, which is called a lot. Not all traders choose to trade this way, however, either because the funds they have are not enough to finance a trade of that size or they aren’t willing to risk the amount of money a lot requires.

 

Mini accounts solve this problem by enabling you to trade in much smaller amounts of 10,000 units. This size is commonly called a mini lot and is worth 10% of a standard lot. Because of mini accounts, the Forex is much more accessible to beginners who want to first get a feel of the market before investing large amounts of money in it. This is why mini accounts often require a starting deposit much smaller than standard accounts.

 

Experienced traders may sometimes hold mini accounts as well whenever they want more flexibility in their trades. Instead of having to choose between 100,000 units and 200,000 units, they can make use of smaller increments and buy 110,000 units  or 120,000 units by trading several mini lots at a time.

 

Using mini accounts gives you a larger degree of control over the risk you want to take on without significantly sacrificing the potential for profit. Leverage for mini accounts can be larger at times that those allowed in standard accounts meaning traders can still control positions with values much greater than their deposit.