Futures with under $2000

If you are trading NQ with under $3k you are undercapitalized for this contract! Consider starting out with a minimal of $3k. If you don't have it you should wait until you do before you start trading. Without a GREAT mechanical system you are at an EXTREME disadvantage. You will be under the gun right out of the gate. Good luck.


p.s. You could also follow Marketsurfer on the YM contract. its realitively small @ $5 a point. That would probably be a better place to start for a newbie.

 

...I T-totally agree. $3K per NQ is what I use.

 

Which broker do your guys consider the best for trading future?

 

TREX

The price for an E-mini dow is around $9000.
With a 5:1 margin, i would be able to purchase 1 contract.

Is this correct, or did I miss something?

 

A contract's cash value is calculated by taking the contract dollar multiplier and multiplying it by the current contract price. Here's how it looks:

YM (mini-dow): $5 x current price (9582) = $47910
ES (S&P 500 mini): $50 x current price (1034.50) = $51725
NQ (Nasdaq-100 mini): $20 x current price (1387.50) = $27750

The intra-day margin is based on the broker you go with.

-FastTrader

 

...if you are trading tens, not hundreds, of contracts monthly, IB is it with $4.80 RT. No competition. Otherwise somone like Fastrade or VelocityFutures is best. See the ads on the homepage here.

 

you mean to tell us that you lost tons of money because of the SEC? are you serious?

 

I didn't lose alot.. i simply lost 10% of my initial capital within the first 5 trading days because I couldn't implement my stops becaue the intraday swings were too large.

This is why I want to get into futures trading. There are no pattern day trading rules when trading futures.

 

i don't understand, did the intraday swings all of a sudden become too large? how much simulation/paper-trading did you do on this strategy before you implemented it?

 

oh yeah.. paper trading.

Yeah, i had a free portfolio with Yahoo for a few years where i kept track of stocks and watched how they reacted to news, but it wasn't until I took the loss that I did a little more research into what "trading" really was.

That's how I stumbled upon this site. I read the "DMI/ADX Consistently Make Profit" thread, and that's where it hit me.
THERE ARE PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO SIMPLY APPLY BASIC RULES TO HOW THE MARKET CURRENTLY MOVES, AND THEY CONSISTENTLY MAKE MONEY.

Anyways, before I came to this site, I thougth trading was purely news driven.. how wrong I was.

Also, posted many times on this site is the phrase "Rule #1: always keep a tight stop loss".

And that is why I now want to trade futures instead of stocks, because it allows me to keep a tight stop loss and sell if the stop is met intraday.