I am thinking about giving this a go. I would like to do a bunch of paper trading before going live. Don't want to open another account elsewhere... got two already. Also is there any issue with trading micros on IB with a small account? By small I mean somewhere in the neighborhood of $23588.44 approximately as of a half hour ago.
I trade some...MNQ, MYM, QM (oil) and VXM My margins are different (higher) since it's tax advantaged account.
I trade the micro's in my IB Roth & IRA rollover using chart trading with auto brackets & an adjustable stop - smooth sailing .. one click and done.
What is a tax advantage account? and why does it affect Margin for Futures? which country tax status?
I trade some in MES. The bid/ask spread is usually very small. Only by the time I have to roll over from one contract to the next you have to beware for widening spread. By the way: the same comments apply to M6E (micro EUR/USD futures contract).
Trading MNQ since November 2019 no problem. See: https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/i-wrote-a-bot-and-gave-it-25k-to-trade.340739/page-19
I'm not sure whether the PDT rule also applies to futures, or only to stocks. Anyway, with your 23.5 k USD account size it should be possible for you to increase that to 25+ k USD? After which the PDT rule does not apply any more.
I'm pretty sure there isn't. I've never run into it anyway, not even when I traded with less than 25k.