They are based on the financial info you tell IB. If you want a higher futures contract limit, you'll have to "adjust" what you tell IB.
So they don't mind if liquid assets suddenly jump a few orders of magnitude over a period of a few weeks? Just want to keep my trading size comparable to total equity.
If you have the money to pay the initial margins for the contracts, you should be fine. You have to adjust the maximum limit in your account settings. As you make more money (hopefully), you will be able to trade more contracts. Am I right Def?
The limits at IB have nothing to do with the account value. Seems like you have to declare over 300,000 in net worth to even trade more than 10 contracts -- kinda silly.
That is dumb. 10 contracts are supposed to be $20,000 odd dollars on margin. A $50,000 account value should be a good minimum to trading 10 contracts for some cushion (depending on risk profile). However, if IB required $300,000 net worth to trade 10 contracts, I might as well just buy the whole value of the contract and not get it on a performance bond. I can't imagine they would have it set up like that.
I would be interested in knowing what IB's net worth parameters are for 2 contracts, 4 contracts. To trade ES 10 contracts you had better be a seasoned trader (several years of profitable trading). Trading 10 contracts on $50K margin is a good way to end up negative by about $20K or so. It is NOT the same as trading 1 contract with $5K.
I think you'd be silly to place your entire net worth into futures but who am I to judge. However, brokers are supposed to have a fiduciary responsibility and thus limits need to be set. At IB internal considerations (net worth is one) are factored in when determining future limits. I do not know all of them but even if I did, I don't think I'd make them public. You can request/change your limits via the account page on the website. If your request is rejected when you think it shouldn't be, send a note to the helpesk who may be able to explain.