The "Dollar value" of 40 contracts is $5Million. If the underlying moves against you by 1/2 of 1%, your $25K equity is wiped out. That would be about 12 points.
I traded for a firm that would allow that but they most certainly would not give you a 40 contract clip right away, it would take more than a few months probably to gain their trust, starting small.and.working your way up. Ive had coworkers hold over 100 contracts into the overnight session on ES and they may have had a couple hundred grand in equity with the firm at the time. But they've earned that trust over years of working with them.
@trader220 I understand what you are looking for, and also know this post is not the answer you seek. Amp Futures offers consistent day-trade margining any time the market is open. Some FCMs/Brokers limit day-trade margins to regular trading hours only, or have a different set of intraday margin (higher than regular session intraday margin, but not the full overnight margin) for after and pre hours. Additionally, Amp has a liquidation policy based on 80% of account value rather than margin requirements, which can make a difference with max position size. Liquidation policy though, has nothing to do with margin necessary to put on a trade. Myself, I am a flat-eod retail trader... intraday margin availability is/was make or break consideration for who gets my business. Trade on!
You guys are a tough audience. No need to be so nit picking... what's a little leverage among friends? Loosen up and give the man 200 to 1. (On second thought)
A thought I've had about this... With the ES, instead of holding 40 contracts outright (let us say long), you could have a position for 20 long, and when the market close approaches, you could just intra-market spread it 20 short on the next month. This would require a margin for overnight of just $800. When market reopens, you close the opposing position . This way you are not exceeding the daytrade margin, and will get the CME margin discount for overnight. Granted, the opposing position may give you slippage on the opening and closing of the position due to it's "thinness", but at least it gets you out of the outright-hold issue. This also got me thinking about whether a broker would recognize the CME margin credits during the day session. I never thought to ask my broker this question. I'll do that next week.
No. If the future moves against you 12 points, all you need to do is drop 1 ct off your position to stay positive NAV. You don't lose it all, just the one. The underlying does not matter in outright future positions, and especially not in spreads.
Do you have a strategy with guaranteed max drawdown of less than 10%? Otherwise you go bust assuming full position size.
Most ET'ers can do the arithmetic... but what about when a surprise news event hits the airwaves and the ES drops 15-30 points or so in a blink? You talk like you understand... you obviously don't.