What's the minimun one can open a day trading account? And what's the leverage? I know for stocks (I trade stocks) min. is 25k and you get 4 times buying power. So how does this work with futures? Thank you.
you can open an account at IB with 2k. The daytrade margin for s&p emini is about $1800, that is good from 8:30 am to 2:45 pm chicago time. The $1800 margin allows you to trade one contract all day as many times as you want. One es contract is the same as 500 shares of SPY. The minimum tick is .25 so that is $12.50 a tick or $50 for a full point (often called a handle.) The exchange minimum margin is about $3800, but every broker can set their own margin requirements if the FCM meets exchange minimum, so it is possible to find brokers with daytrade margin at about 1k per contract. in otherwords, how little you need to trade is not really a problem. As far as I know, there is no amount of money no matter how much you have which is considered a safe amount to trade with. I trade one contract for every 5K in account, and that is far from safe.