Well i am having mixed feelings now, today i lost a ton of money but i am not feeling very upset, maybe just a bit down considering i ate one cereal box and one big bag of chips, and considering how health conscious i usually am, maybe that was my way to vent! I opened a 10K account for futures trading few months back and had got it up to 11.1K. Today i shorted 3 YM contracts around 9am EST and made 21 pips for a nice $330 profit bring my account to around 11.4k. I was happy with my result today and decided to call it a week. But it was not meant to be! See after i placed my order i went to take a shower, and placed a 15 point stop market order. When i got back from my shower i saw i was up and closed my position. BUT I COMPLETELY forgot to cancel my stop market buy order for 3 YM contracts and i went to work!! I don't know how could i be so stupid! The stop was at 10620! And it was placed at 9:31 i believe, and I had no idea!! Even more shocking is that market today went all the way up to 10827 giving me a undeserving unrealized profit of over 3K! Ofcourse i had no clue i had that profit, i thought i was out! Then the market went down all the way to 10350 or so! and now i am down almost 4k! Sigh i can't believe i forgot all about the stop order. I have been so disciplined before this! just feel dumb now! So had to vent, sorry
What software are you using to trade? Here, try this one: NinjaTrader A lifetime license would have cost you much less than your losses today, and it would be virtually impossible for that situation to have transpired even if you only had a rudimentary knowledge of the software. GL
I used Tradestation for this trade. I also use Ninja Trader but for only viewing charts. I guess i should seriously consider getting the license! lol
oh and i am still holding 3 long YM contracts! i hope the market doesn't crash further monday morning! lol
Hate to be the bearer of bad news but I think the overnight margin is $3150 per contract on ym so come monday you will probably be holding just 1 contract due to a forced margin call.
i don't know how he did not get margin call, they raised margins today,old margin for YM was $3503 and today was raised, don't remember exactly by how much but if memory serves me right YM now its around $3800, same for ES now is little over $5000 old margin for ES was $4500.
3 contracts with 11k =\, bit too high risk imo. I'd do about 7500/contract for the YM but thats just me.
I can't believe you are being allowed to take a 3-contract losing position overnight - and overweekend - with a $10K account. I know daytrading margins still allow you to use pretty good leverage, but overnight margins are pretty tight nowadays. Also, I don't recommend trading more than 1 contract under current volatility simply because you are undercapitalized.