I am not going to put you up against the mob like the TV game show 1 vs. 100 does. This article is for all of you 1 lot traders that only dream about being 100 lot traders and can't see how you will ever get there. For those of that don't know what a "lot" is, it is just Forex and Futures lingo that represents the quantity of the investment. It is very much like 1 share of stock vs 100 shares of stock. When price fluctuates your portfolio value will adjust multiplied by the amount of lots (or shares) you own. What if I where to tell you that I could teach you how to become the big trader you desire to be without risking your shirt in the learning phase. Would that interest you? Now I'm not talking about preparing you with a demo account and using fake money. Demo accounts are only good for learning how to use the software and rehearsing a new trading plan. Once that is mastered, you need to get your skin in the game. This article is for all of you investors that can't seem to get in the game or over the hump.

We all want to be the biggest trader on the street and trade 100 lots at time, but that's a scary venture for most because 100 lots is roughly worth about $10,000,000 in the professional world of Forex or Futures trading. That's a lot of cake!! If you were to trade 100 lots in the EURUSD Currency Market at the professional level, you would be exposing your $10M account to about $175,000 of risk/reward in a 24 hour span (just under 2%). This is very reasonable for that kind of money.

You might be saying, "You're crazy Mike, I don't have that kind of money." Keep reading...You can adjust the worth of the 100 lot with a spot Forex account, and make it equivalent to the worth of 1 professional lot. The act of trading a "reduced value 100 lot" will begin to prepare you to think big, get you used to trading 100 lots and at the same time only expose you to $1750 of risk reward over a 24 hour span vs. $175K in the professional scenario. You can train yourself just like a professional 100 lot trader or as Charlie D would say a "BIG DOG" without risking the "BIG DOG" dollars. I had the honor and privilege of watching Charlie D in action, which was subsequently at the start of my career in the 30 Yr. Bond Futures Pit at the CBOT. His acronym was CPD, which I thought stood for the Chic ago Police Department before I met him. His booming voice was scarier than the Chicago Police, but he had a heart of gold. He gave back to the business he dominated by educating traders after hours. He was one of the first people to inspire me to give back as an educator as I tasted success. He spoke a lot about how to get started and how your brain handles trading. In the end there is absolutely no difference in the action required to trade 100 professional lots vs 100 micro lots, just difference in $$ and guts. The mere act of doing 100 is getting you to dream big, practice live like a "BIG DOG" and visualize the possibilities.

For some 100 micro lots is still too large in the beginning, so we show you how to adjust the idea all the way down to 100th the size of the micro idea. The exposure would then be watered down to $17.50 of risk/reward over a 24 hour span. All us probably spend $17.50 for lunch so there is something for all risk appetites. At the very least my goal is to get you to trade 2 micro lots rather than 1 by the end of this article. There are three main reasons for me to get you off of the 1 lot mentality and thinking bigger.

The first reason we get involved in this business is to make a ton of money. The sky is the limit!! The words of Les Brown ring in my ears when he says that he would rather "go out" climbing a hill than sliding down a hill. In other words start dreaming big and get climbing. With no guarantees of success on any journey the flip side of the coin is that we know the sky can come crashing down. To hedge ourselves we must move at a pace th at is within our grasp and at the same time test our edge and willingness to grow. A 1 lot isn't going to do it.

The second reason is that the financial market is a very dynamic animal. It ebbs and flows with public sentiment (fear and greed), interest rate movement, geo-political events, natural disasters etc. We can never fully predict what will happen. Three years ago nobody was predicting that Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns were going to be extinct. Or that Greece and Spain were going to be rated as junk. These things don't happen everyday, but you need to "expect the unexpected" as we described in one of our recent webinars. This leads me to the third reason to get off of the 1 lot.

The 1 lot is extremely inflexible and very limiting in an unknown environment. You are either all-in or all out. Did you ever get into a trade with a 1 lot and take a small profit, because you where waiting for hours and got frustrated as it came up short of your desired objective. Yeah, and as soon as you took profit, the market raced to its objective, leaving you kicking and screaming. How about this one: you got in with a 1 lot and the market just missed your objective and it turned around and stopped you out for a loss. My teeth are clenching just thinking about it!!

Trading more than 1 lot can give your strategy some much needed flexibility. If you do a minimum of two at a time you can cover one lot w hen your trade nears it's objective and stalls for an extended period of time before reaching the finish. When frustration sets in covering half of the idea will lock in some profit and reduce the tension in your body. At the same time if the trade follows through, you still have 1 lot running and more to show in the end. Covering half also hedges your bet, because if your trade turns back and runs the other way to stop the other half out, you break even on the idea.

You can't win, if you don't play!! Prosperity is at your fingertips! All you have to do is grab it!!

For more RDS articles on trading, visit www.rdstrader.com.