You need to remember something here. Discount brokers like AMP are doing y'all a favor by allowing these reduced "day-trade margins". Day-trade margins do not exist at the CME. They are provided to the clients of the FCM as a courtesy by said FCM, like AMP. The ES currently has an initial margin requirement of $12,100 per contract. When you are trading your one-lot on the ES with a $1K account at 400 bux "day-trade margin", how is that possible? It is because a firm like AMP is LENDING you the extra $11,100 from their seg account funds for you to initiate and hold that position. Now. With their generous loan to you along those lines, and you go ahead and trade your $100K account gobbling up all that discount, what is happening? Let's go max lever. $400 into a $100K account? They are allowing you to trade 250 ES contracts on margin. So you have donated your $100K. How much money does AMP have to put up to maintain your position for the day? $2.925 million. That is what THEY have to use from THEIR end, along with your measly $100K, to meet the exchange requirements for that performance bond. When the settlement time comes, if you do not have the extra $2.925 million in your account, (aside from the actual position's PnL), they will liquidate your positions, whether in profit or loss. From what I recall for an overnight hold, they must provide 8% above and beyond your total NAV in positions. So if you are at BE NAV by settlement time/market close, they still have to provide 8% of that 3 million of your account to the exchange. With that in mind, you can see how unwieldy it can get. Think about it, and stop staring at the gift in the mouth of the horse. In the famous words of Abashi the Sock Puppet, "Quit Yer' Bitchin!"
If you trade 100 NQs, you are trading a value of about 30 Million USD (15,000 x 20 x 100). Thats a big amount of capital you are pushing around, and you should be aware of the consequences. Anytime, without any warning, there can be a sudden drop in the market of 1%, 2% or even 5%. 1% drop with 100 NQs means you just lost 300,000 USD. Oh, you only have 100k in your account ? No problem, your broker will come for it and collect the remaining 200k from you, dont worry. What happens if the market drops 5% superfast without any warning ? Can you live with such a loss or will you just take the next window for a quick exit ? Those crazy situations happen once in a while, I have seen them in countless markets over the past 15 years. You should not get paralyzed and demotivated by the fact that there are huge risks out there, but you should really know what you are doing, in all situations.
If you still want to avoid those doubled margins for account balances over 100k, you could for example open a second account with another broker or with AMP, or a subaccount, and split up your capital. A second account with another broker is always a good idea as backup. The more different it is from your primary broker the better. For example a US broker for your primary account, and then european broker for the backup account. CQG feed for the primary, Rithmic feed for the backup... and so on.
Yeahbut... If you'd bought 100 NQ instead of "just" 10, you'd have had $400k profit. Opportunities like that are just too juicy, and you surely wouldn't want to be locked out, right? Then again... 1/2 hour earlier when the CPI number was reported, the NQ dropped 95 points in about 30 seconds. If you'd have had 100 NQ on... and had been a bit neglectful of placing a hard stop (easy to do when you decide you'll just "watch it" this time...), your $50k margin would have been $150k in debit in half-a-minute. Then what? IOW... nobody in his right mind should be playing that kind of leverage game, 'cause, "shit happens."
Amp would owe margin on its net position If their customers are long 200 contracts and short 180 contracts the CME margin would be for net 20 contracts
$2.925million margin, for a day trade position? Do you even know what the hell you are talking about. They don't have to put up anything like full margin for intra day positions. This is why they can offer so much margin for day trade positions but will close you out before the close when full margin is due at the exchange. Then the silliness of requiring customers to remove funds to below $100K, so they can trade larger again, this policy (if actually true) increases the risk for a broker like AMP because it discourages people from keeping more than 100K in the account. A better policy (which i outlined above) would be to allow more than $100K to kept in the account, but don't decrease buying power but also don't increase it either.
In your example there are 380 CONTRACTS. Each one, at any moment in time will have an unrealized profit or loss, or be breakeven... and NONE of them will be, nor will they expire worthless! The exchange vets a counter-party for EACH contract. That is known as the performance bond (i.e margin), and it is per contract. There may also be a fungibility feature as well.
Yes. This has been confirmed by AMP. The CME does not offer day-trading discounts. The broker does. If the CME did, why would IB have such outrageous daytrade margins? Why, when the shit hits the fan, does AMP sometimes revert to full exchange minimums for a time? If the CME offered these discounts, there would be no need for adjustments. Please find for me anywhere in the CME rulebook where they offer discounted day-trade margins on outright positions. If you find it, I will stand corrected. And so will every other broker out there who offers CME products.
It is really simple. For as long as we can remember, we have had this risk setting. It is simple, easy for our customers to understand and has worked all these years. We extend Super low margins, which is great for all our retail traders.... Once you get above 100K - the risk profile (if allowed to be at the same Super low margins) - in our opinion, starts to get out of our prudent risk parameters. Even if you double our Super Low Day Trade Margins - they still a lot lower than other firms https://www.ampfutures.com/trading-info/margins/