I'm wondering how much equity most brokers require to trade one contract of the following futures - GBP/USD (BP) Gold (ZG) Bund (BD) Dax (XG) Cac 40 (MT)
1) At a bare, bare minimum, you must have the "overnight margin". 2) At a bare minimum, it's best to have an account with atleast $10,000, preferably much more money than that, to merely trade a 1-lot. 3) Don't be "deceived" by daytrading margins. :eek:
I'm planning to have $15,000 for drawdowns and an extra $10,000 or so just to maintain equity in case of a max drawdown. If I had $25,000 to start, and took a drawdown of around $15,000, could I still continue to trade with just 10k in my account? Would I only be able to trade one contract at a time? It is rare, but possible that my system could signal 2 or 3 trades in different instruments on the same day. Thanks for your input.
1) ?.....without going into too much detail about "tax planning" and assuming that you live in the USA, try to limit your maximum drawdown to $3,000. 2) Could you?....Probably yes. 3) Would you?....It depends on margin requirements. 4) You may have to "adjust" your system if it generates too many signals, especially in correlated markets. If you have a large drawdown, you WILL re-adjust or discard your system.
Thank you. I appreciate your feedback. This link from OpenECry was also handy: http://www.openecry.com/traderstoolbox/margins.cfm