How much capital?

IG have a demo account where you can trade with £10,000 virtual funds,

Plus500 is another one you can look at, I think there account is unlimited.

Thanks for all the advice

FXCM is pretty good they have a demo account you can use and if you want trade with a bit of money on the table to include some emotions into it you can open one of there mini accounts and trade the ftse from 7p per point for example

Hi Debbie,

You can trade with 1k, 5k, 10k, 25k+ accounts but there's a few things to consider.
What % of your pot are you going to risk per trade.... 2%, 5% etc

Obviously the smaller the pot it means to smaller the returns per trade.
Now it's ok if you are disciplined and strict, collecting at your target areas etc
but I found on a smaller pot I sometimes looked at the running profit at target areas and didn't collect as it wasn't any great amount......therefore very often giving all that profit back, even though I had successfully reached my target

1k pot
2% = £20
FTSE trade
10pt stop loss = £2 per pt
Target = 30pt
30 x 2 = £60 profit

25k pot
2% = £500
FTSE trade
10pt stop loss = £50 per pt
Target = 30pt
30 x 50 = £1,500 profit

This is just an example but you can see how if you're not disciplined it could be easy to let £60 just ride especially if you've waited ages for the trade, but being £1,500 in profit you're likely to bite the markets hand off to collect it.

Both trades are perfectly successful but human emotion can sway you from your trade plan.

DISCIPLINE and PATIENCE.........The two best words I've learnt in trading, I have them stuck on my screen now!

Also, if that trade then comes back to take out your stop even if it's now moved to break even, you mentally feel like you've failed and become annoyed with yourself for not sticking to your plan. So you confidence takes a bashing for this when really you should have collected and praised yourself from a successful trade.

Sorry to waffle on, but just something I've had to over come on my journey... so might be of help

Depends what you intend to trade.

As some have mentioned here, platforms like IG etc. allow you to trade on margin (i.e. You only really need £100). However, as the disclaimers go, it is VERY risky (google it, too much to explain in a forum post). I would not suggest it until you are very familiar with markets, leverage and if you intend to trade currencies and commodities- macro econ!

As for share trading through an online broker, I would suggest min £1,000 but it again depends on your strategy. Short-term (i.e. if you are day trading) the moves in price are likely to be smaller, so you need more shares to make the money= more capital required.

You can try IG, they've got best platform/app for all your trading needs imo