Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open.

How should I begin investing real money as a student?
I think you have a really good idea, kudos to it. It will be difficult to break eve, and while you stressed the fact that you are ready to part with this money, it would be interesting for you not to part with this money just for the sake of trading. You will be frustrated because you are "winning" and breaking even or even losing money in the process. Think about that. For somebody with limited experience the derivatives market carries a very high risk also as everything in this matters carries high or very high yield. Trading futures on margin can actually work but I think you will need a bit more money. Check the mini contracts of infinity futures and calculate the commissions. You will be paying more for a contract, yes. you will need more money for your maintenance margin, yes, but if you day-trade and you have a cheapo broker this will be substantially lower. Gold contracts pay about 10 to 1 so a mini contract of 33 ounces will pay you 33 dollars per 1 dollar move. Your commissions will be about 4/5 usd in a discount broker and you will need to pay some exchange house fees, maybe about 15% of your trade will be fees. Check the contract specs and costs. As somebody said before, they wouldn't recommend trading on margin but with an account of that side I wouldn't know anything else. Trading physical gold on margin could also be an option. Just my 2 cents.