How Much Can You Make Trading Per Month

The honest answer to how much can you make trading per month: there is no fixed amount. The result depends on account size, the return for the period, fees, and how many months in a row ended in a loss. The same trader can close a month in profit, at breakeven, or in a loss, so you need to work through scenarios as a percentage of capital rather than an expected "salary".

Why a trader's monthly income is not a salary

A salary is tied to time and a position. Trading your own account is tied to the outcome of trades, and that outcome changes every month. An employee knows their income in advance; a private trader only knows in advance the amount they are risking.

It helps to separate two situations. First. A trader works at a prop firm, a fund, or a broker and receives a base salary plus a share of profits. The salary is fixed, but it is paid for employment, not for trading as such, and it has nothing to do with the income of someone trading their own account. Second. A trader trades their own money. Then monthly trading income is made up of realized profit on closed trades minus losing trades, minus fees, minus infrastructure costs. Open positions do not count until they are closed.

Here is how this differs from a salary in practice. A losing month is not compensated by anything automatically. After a string of losses the account is smaller, and the same percentage return produces less money. Income does not grow linearly with experience; it grows with the size of capital and the quality of the system.

There is no reliable statistic for the crypto market on how often a month ends in a loss. The largest regulator sample concerns a different market, but the scale is telling. According to a SEBI study (India's securities market regulator, published on 23 September 2024), 93% of 11.3 million individual traders in equity futures and options had a net loss over the three financial years from April 2021 to March 2024. The average loss including transaction costs was about 2 lakh rupees (200,000 rupees) per person, 7.2% of traders were profitable, and about 1% earned more than 1 lakh rupees after costs. These are Indian equities, not crypto, so the figures cannot be carried over directly. But the conclusion that a positive month is not guaranteed even to the majority of active participants applies to any leveraged market. The CFTC (the US derivatives regulator), in its customer advisory on the risks of virtual currency trading, specifically notes high volatility, reminds readers that leveraged trading amplifies risk, and advises speculating only with money you can afford to lose.

How capital affects the money result

Account return is measured in percent, income in money. The same return on different accounts produces incomparable sums. Plus 5% in a month on $100 is $5; on $10,000 it is $500. Both traders may have the same skill; the only difference is capital.

Two consequences follow. First. If you have $100, the question "how much does a trader make per month" has almost no meaning for you in money terms. The sum will be small at any realistic percentage, while the time and attention spent are the same. On a small account it makes more sense to measure progress in percent and in execution quality, and to treat the money as tuition within an acceptable loss. Second. Part of your costs does not depend on account size. A terminal subscription, paid data, education, internet, and time cost the same for a $100 account and a $10,000 account, but for the first they eat up tens of percent, for the second a fraction of a percent.

There is also a technical limit. Exchanges have a minimum order size. On the futures markets of major exchanges it usually starts at $5 in notional value and is noticeably higher for some pairs; the exact values depend on the instrument and the exchange. On a $100 account this means that a single entry already takes up at least 5% of the deposit without any leverage, and building careful risk management is hard. Leverage does not solve the problem of small capital. It multiplies profit, loss, and fees alike.

Scenario examples for different accounts

Below is a matrix for three account sizes and three monthly outcomes. This is a scenario, not a forecast. The percentages were chosen for clarity, not as a typical monthly return. The result in the table is shown after exchange trading fees and before taxes, funding, and fixed costs (subscriptions, education). Fees are already included, so do not subtract them a second time.

Reverse arithmetic is useful for comparing with a familiar salary. To net $1,000 per month at the same hypothetical +5%, you need a $20,000 account. At +2%, it is already $50,000. If the income you have in mind is larger than your capital allows, the plan rests on an unrealistic percentage, not on math.

Winning, breakeven, and losing month

Winning month. The amount in the right-hand column is available to withdraw only if it is realized profit on closed trades. A floating gain on an open position is not income yet.

Breakeven month. In practice it most often means that trading produced a small gain that was entirely consumed by fees. For evaluating a system this is a useful signal: there are trades, but there is no edge, or the edge is smaller than the costs.

Losing month. Recovering from minus 5% requires not +5% but roughly +5.26%, because the base has shrunk. Take $1,000 over three consecutive months with results of −5%, 0%, and +5%. After the first month the account holds $950, after the second the same $950, after the third $997.50. The quarter closes at minus $2.50 with one losing and one winning month. The deeper the monthly drawdown, the stronger this effect, and the more important it is to cap it in advance rather than hope to win it back.

Fees and costs already included

Exchange fees are calculated on the notional value of the position, not on margin. This is the main reason costs get underestimated. Take Binance's rates for a regular user on USDⓈ-M futures (Binance help center, checked on 3 November 2026; other exchanges, VIP tiers, and paying fees in BNB have different rates). A maker pays 0.02%, a taker 0.05%. Entering and exiting with market orders costs 0.1% of notional per round trip.

Suppose a $1,000 account, 5x leverage, and a single position with $5,000 notional. One round trip costs $5. Twenty such trades in a month come to $100 in fees, or 10% of the account. To close the month at breakeven, trading has to deliver +10% before fees. Without leverage, the same number of trades costs $20, that is 2%.

In the matrix above these costs are already deducted. What remains separate is funding on perpetual contracts (it can be either a cost or income depending on the direction of the position and the rate), taxes under your country's rules, and fixed costs. Count those on top of the table, once. It helps when the terminal shows total fees paid and the realized result for the account side by side, as in the Accounts module in Secret Terminal; otherwise the figure has to be assembled manually from the exchange history.

What a profit screenshot cannot tell you

A screenshot of a +40% trade or a chart of a rising balance answers none of the questions needed to assess income.

• Account size. +40% on a position with $200 notional is $80, and at 20x leverage the margin in it was $10.
• Realized or floating profit. An open trade can still close in a loss.
• Period and sample. One trade or the best day out of a hundred says nothing about the month.
• Deposits and withdrawals. A growing balance may be a deposit, not trading.
• Drawdown. What loss was taken on the way to this gain and what risk per trade was used.
• Fees and funding. The gross result in a screenshot is often shown before them.
• Survivorship. The people who post are the ones it worked out for; losses rarely make it into the feed.

So other people's results are not an argument for your plan. If you want to understand what figures actually show up among private traders and what they consist of, we covered that in How much do crypto traders make: real numbers. For your own calculation, what matters is not someone else's screenshot but your own statistics over several months.

How to evaluate results over several periods

One month proves nothing. The minimum horizon for conclusions about a system is three months, preferably six, provided that each had enough trades (dozens, not three).

What to count.

• The result of each month as a percentage of capital at the start of the month, after fees.
• The median monthly result, not just the average. One lucky month lifts the average and masks a string of losses.
• The maximum monthly drawdown and the maximum drawdown within a month.
• The number of consecutive winning and losing months.
• The share of fees in turnover. If costs are close to gross profit, the system is living on the edge.

Deposits and withdrawals distort the picture if you count income as the change in balance. It is more correct to calculate the return separately for each segment between cash movements and then multiply the factors. Example. A $1,000 account, +10% in the first half of the month, now $1,100. You add $900, now $2,000; the second half is −5%, now 1,900.The+900 change in balance over the month looks like profit, but the trading result was 1.10 × 0.95 = 1.045, that is +4.5%. In money it is +$100 from the first half minus $100 of loss in the second, $0 from trading in total, and the entire increase in balance is your deposit. The percentage describes the quality of decisions in each segment; the money depends on how much capital was at risk at each moment.

Keeping such records by hand is hard, so a trading journal comes in handy, one where every trade lands with its fee and the reason for entry. In Secret Terminal, the Trading Journal module builds a day-by-day result calendar, a cumulative profit curve, and a feed of closed trades with volume, leverage, and the outcome in percent and currency, with filters by exchange, API key, and month. This removes the counting routine but does not replace the review: the numbers explain what happened, the trader looks for the reasons.

A separate note on demo. A demo account result must not be included in these statistics. A simulation has no real emotions and often no honest slippage or fees, so monthly figures there are systematically better. If you need practice with real money, use a small amount within an acceptable loss, taking the minimum order and fees into account, and treat it as tuition, not as the start of an income.

FAQ

• Can you plan mandatory expenses around trading?

  No, not until you have confirmed multi-month statistics and a financial cushion covering 6–12 months of expenses. Mandatory payments require a steady inflow, while a trader's monthly result can be negative. If the rent depends on the next trade, you will be trading out of need rather than by plan, and that will worsen the result itself. Basic expenses should be covered by other income or reserves; trading profit goes to reinvestment and optional goals.

• How does return in percent differ from the amount of income?

  Return shows the quality of trading; the amount shows its money scale. +5% on $500 and +5% on $50,000 are the same quality and different money. Comparing traders, and your own months, is only correct in percent of capital at the start of the period. The amount is used for everyday planning, and it is determined by the size of the account you are willing to risk, not by skill.

• How do you account for deposits and withdrawals?

  Split the period into segments between cash movements, calculate the return for each segment, and multiply the factors. A simple difference between the closing and opening balance of the month will be wrong if there were deposits or withdrawals in between. Withdrawing profit does not reduce the return; it reduces the base for the next month, and that is normal. Record the date and amount of every movement, and the calculation takes a minute.

• Is there a reliable average profit for all traders?

  No. Exchanges do not publish client results, and private surveys and blogs suffer from survivorship bias. The only large verifiable samples belong to regulators of traditional markets. For example, the SEBI study mentioned above showed that 93% of individual traders in equity futures and options in India were at a loss over three years. There is no comparable study for crypto, so any "average trader return" in advertising is either an invention or a sample of winners.

Start with a written trading plan that sets out in advance the risk per trade, the monthly drawdown limit, and the exit rules, and at the end of each month review your closed trades in the journal that Secret Terminal builds automatically from your connected accounts.