I've been using a simulation account with Global Futures and Ninjatrader. So far, I've been successful. In the past 24 hours, I've made over $1800 in profit utilizing only $10000 or so by just playing around with ES. I have several questions though. 1) Right now, the bid/ask is around 1124.00. Does this mean that it costs only $1124 to buy a single contract? So does this mean that I can trade futures with a $26,000 account? I remember reading somewhere before that it is not advisable to trade futures unless if the person has at least $100K. 2) How does futures margin need to be taken into account when day trading futures? 2) ES has a 50x leverage. Is there a list of futures and their leverages? Are there ones that are good to trade with enough volume and liquidity? ES seems to be the most popular on this board. Also, if there's a good guide for day trading futures and the costs associated with them, please direct me to it. Thanks.
I dunno if I can double post in a thread considering that I can only edit my posts 30 mins after submitting them. Anyway, my total profits for today were close to $4400. All I did was trade 4 contracts at a time and made a $1000 profit or so for 3 of the trades. After doing some research, I found the CME website listing the margins and explaining how the requirements affecting trading futures contracts. What I'd like to know is...if i have only $26K to trade ES with, how should I go about doing this? Trade 2 contracts at a time since my margin requirement will be about $5000 (2500 initial margin per contract) according to Interactive Brokers? Also, if I shorted 1 contract of ES, how would margin rates affect me?
If you daytrade ES futures (open and close position in the same day) price per one contract is about 500-1000$ at some brokers (Mirus, AMP, etc...). But if you want to hold contract overnight then margin requirements are more than 5,000$ per contract (don't know how much is for ES now), chech with your broker. You can trade futures with any size of account, because there is no "day trading rule" like when you day trade stocks. When you day trade stocks you have to have minimum of 25,000$ account. Futures are extremly risky and performance from your paper trading account to your cash account may be different Start with one contract...
http://individuals.interactivebrokers.com/en/p.php?f=margin&ib_entity=llc here's the margin requirements at IB. The idea is to trade small enough that you don't have to reduce size during a drawdown. Hard to dig yourself out of a hole using half the size. Your account window always displays your current margin, so you can fool around with it and see how it changes after the close. I don't know if it's still this way, but IBs overnight margin use to kick in about 40 min before the close. Margin is the same long or short. Click on an ES contract and it will show you the value for the contract. If you haven't yet disabled it, when you hit transmit, a safety msg will appear asking if you are sure, in that msg is the value of any contract. Or you can set up your account window to display value.
Thanks for the info guys. Are there enough shortable ES contracts to short ES easily? If I do short it, how would I be affected by margin rates?
Call a Futures Broker, set up an appt, and ask them your questions. I trade Futures,and there's no difference between going Long or Short. My Margin requirements don't change. Again, call a real Futures Broker and ask them all your questions,they'll be happy to help.
Trading futures is very hard game, you need to spend months, maybe more on simulator before going live. You need to develop your strategy and iron discipline,edge etc... Don't be fooled with simulator results, I was making hundreds/thousands dollars every day trading one or two ES contracts on simulator but realtime is VERY different mind game. There is good info about trading on this forum, read it...
I urge you to read this book: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470137711/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=mark01f-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399373&creativeASIN=0470137711">The CME Group Risk Management Handbook: Products and Applications (Wiley Finance)</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=mark01f-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0470137711&camp=217145&creative=399373" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />
theres more ES to short than we all have money for. A new contract is created everytime a new seller and a new buyer make a trade. And you can always take over ownership of a short position from a bear who wants to cover. If you talk to a broker, make sure to give him a fake telephone number. ES is no harder or easier than anything else, 6 months of paper trading will be more valuable than any book or seminar. I doubt very seriously if any trader trades nothing but ES for 6 months in a paper account with 25K he will ever commit real money to trading just that market. But you may find a strategy that involve ES.