I started learning forex back in 2010 and been trading full time for the last 2.5 years. I will first answer the questions of OP and then comment on other posts.
1. As a small beginner trader you will need to use a broker. All brokers are criminals in disguise, but some are better than others. Just do your own due diligence and go with the one who has relatively good reviews. If you don't annoy them too much with your business, you'll be fine.
2. I don't think you can become a good trader in 1-2 weeks. 3-5 years is more realistic in my opinion, if you work hard and make conscious effort to improve. The learning curve is massive, don't underestimate it.
3. To make money in forex, you need to trade on the professional, not retail, side of the market. You also need to have a professional, not retail, strategy and also a professional understanding of how the forex market actually works. It's hard to explain what I mean in a few sentences, but just keep in mind that the information that you will find in the majority of courses, forums, books, videos, etc. is retail and it won't help you in making money from trading in any way.
4. Usually $200 is the smallest sensible amount, but some brokers have cent accounts as well, but they come with worse trading conditions. If you can't afford that or if you're from a poor country then you can go with a prop firm that has a good scaling plan and the smallest starting fee that I've seen was $60.
Now my comments about other people's posts:
- BabyPips may be the place to learn to trade, but it's not the place to learn to make money. These are totally different things, and most educators will only teach you how to consistently lose money because they get a kickback from brokers for your losses.
- I agree that gambling is not a good idea, but professional trading doesn't have anything in common with gambling. It can be a very flexible and lucrative one-man business if you know what you're doing.
- It's not possible to automate a professional trading strategy, because it can only be used together with a professional understanding of how this market works, and robots can't think. The idea of a simple mechanical robot-like strategy is a fantasy. However, I do have a profitable EA running but its return in % is very small compared to manual trading (because I need to leave plenty of room for drawdowns) and it only works because of certain favorable economic conditions that we currently have. It wouldn't have worked 3 years ago and it will continue to work only while the conditions last. So EAs are just side hobbies. Manual professional trading is the only way to grow your account fast.
- Well said about mass-market FX gurus. Don't learn from them. If they knew how to make money in trading, they would be doing that, instead of running an "education" business. Because this business will never be more profitable than actual professional trading. True professional traders do not promote any courses, do not advertise their lifestyle and certainly do not share their secrets to the mass public because what they know actually works.
- Capital is not the most important thing in trading and if you accumulate a lot of capital before you learn to make money trading, most likely you will lose it all when you finally start trading. The most important thing is knowing what you do and being a good trader. Understanding what's going on the market and making smart decisions. Money comes as a side effect of being a good trader, and if you're a good trader then you will grow your account quickly and you won't need big starting capital. Besides, it's much safer to use broker's money than your own.
- Udemy is also not the place to learn professional trading. No professional trader would ever use that platform to teach other traders.