What is the standard capital requirement to trade in the Emini S&P 500?

he said the emini , NOT the large contract !!

and why would anyone take advice from a "failed trader"

 

what is a "standard requirement"? I thought 5k per contract is the norm? that's a 100 pt move before liquidation.

100k per contract??? :eek:

 

So far, I have 1 not bad answer. lets hear more!

 

100k per contract if you're going to take a small winner and add into it as a loser...

I've tried systems where, you would want ridiculous margin for your 1 contract position if you want to almost never lose (sure sometimes you'd hit out because you know you can get in lower, but otherwise you're never losing).

 

I was making fun of the OP. Of course his standard is not our standard...

After all, he is happy with $100 monthly return on a 100K capital...

 

What he said.

 

$100k per contract?

Margin is like $500 per contract. A $5k account should be good in case you have some drawdown, but if you need more money then you probably shouldn't be trading real money yet (because needing more money means you'll have lots of drawdown which everyone says is bad... or it means you're averaging down in which case you'll need a LOT more than $5k for the ES).

Someone trading 1 contract on a $100k account can do exactly the same as someone trading 1 contract on a $5k account. How much drawdown do you guys have?

 

Why would you not trade as many contracts as you can so long as your VaR at your maximum loss point is less than the optimal percentage bet based on the historical performance of your strategy? So if you have a $100K account and weren't strictly day-trading, you would trade ~17 contracts, or 1 for every $5625 in margin, so long as the total possible loss was less than whatever your optimal bet size is, whether that be 10%, 15% or 30%. Of course, this assumes you have a strategy which has been thoroughly tested and you have a high confidence level (not from your subjective assessment, but statistically-speaking) in its robustness.

Since, by definition, trading capital should be risk capital, you should be prepared to lose it all, i.e. it should not be your entire net worth. Once you've separated that capital from the rest of your capital, you should deploy it optimally, seeking neither excessive risk nor excessive safety. This is true regardless of what you are trading.