Hey man, not sure what prompted you to give the sermon but all the original poster asked was a recommendation for a broker. Yes; and what you write is mostly correct. Dont see how it could help someone who is interested in the market to learn. Stop pursuing the interest and get a regular job.. and dont think about trading. Will that make you happy. What is your point?
Jesus, you don't give them legit employment info. Anyone with the coin and a pulse can open an account.
Fair enough - i did in fact assume you mean all you want is to trade with 5k. I've been a fair amount of work on figuring out minimum trading sizes for strategies in the futures space; I don't think even 25k is enough for meaningfully testing a decent futures strategy with any chance of making good money these days (I echo bone's sentiment. There's no more low hanging fruits in futures space anymore). You are going to georgetown, eh? Good for you - you probably don't want my advice at this point, but I'd suggest you try to use the great resources that that education and insitution offer you and see if you can land an internship at a decent shop (I know I know, I'm assuming you aren't already doing that - if you are - awesome; good for you). I think you'll see that books like Disciplined Trader, Trading for Living is VERY far from the bleeding edge of the modern trading is.
Even if you had only 5k there is nothing wrong with starting at that amount. $500 intra-day margin gives you 10 lots to play with. Begin trading 1 lot and you are using 10% of your capital, which is a reasonable amount. Don't listen to the people critcizing you. I think you're better off starting small. Personally, I wouldn't even increase the account to 20 or 25k until you are successful with the 5k.
Listen to this guy - he actually knows what he's talking. Future point sizes are large enough even for eminis that almost no reasonable trading strategies trading 1 lot won't blow out 5k.
Stops are not free. People often forget that on this board. How many ES points is $500 or 10%? How often will that happen? Will it happen before your strategy has a chance to work (or are you perfect in your entry timing?) If not, how many times will you lose that 10% before you hit a win (even if that will run a huge profit)? Things to think about.
Maybe think about all of the electronic funds wiring charges you are going to incur simply because you were idiotic enough to start a futures account with $5K just for the sake of proving some non-sensical point about what exactly who can be sure - that somehow discipline ( or ? ) is gained with the prospect of going down with a just a few rookie mistakes, perhaps ?
Stick with the 5k and 1 lot.. That will give you (+/ -) 70 -80 points(pending on commissions and freq. of trades) on the ES to figure it out before you have to ante up again. Going with 10 lots on 5k will give you a margin call with only a couple of ticks against you (of course you could sell 1 or 2 to cover) Start small. No need to start out with 25k. Obviously starting too small with say 600.00 would be silly giving you a 2 pt margin of error before you would have to ante up again. I am opening an account with Global Futures. They have 400 or 500 intra margin pending if you go with RCG or openecry(ES). They also have some promo going on with 300 margin(ES). I didn't read up on though since its only a 100 bucks less. Good luck!