Because for a simple micro they ask for 50 quid, when the CME ask for 1650. We all know that brokers are huge benefactors of the retail trader community. Now I see two options here: The obvious is that is not a futures contract but a synthetic one so they don't need to support any margin since is not really hitting the CME at anytime. They force margin calls in case you don't close your positions before the bell, that would make them lots of enemies among poor traders. My bet is on the first one. I don't see them preparing 1600 of capital per position for every single trader they have as a client. They are not that nice.
You have to be prepared for the worst case scenario. If a trade goes very bad and you're not out early enough, you want to have enough margin to recover. $50 per day sounds easy but it's no different than $500 or $5,000 per day if you calculate the margin requirement correctly. I generally use 3-4x margin. So for every NQ contract, I have approximately $3-4,000 for margin.
That's exactly what they do. My orders go to the exchange, not some cockneyed synthetic thing you keep talking about. I've seen it on the ladder, and I've seen it on the TOS print at the CME website. One of the benefits of trading a thinly-traded contract is you get to see your activity stand out. Hell, why don't you call them tomorrow and ask them? @Robert Morse
A skilled and disciplined trader could average $50 a day with one MES. Such skill and discipline is highly unlikely given the naive nature of the OP's question. A thousand dollars is enough to trade one MES, again given the above. You could trade with somewhat less margin capital but the day trading minimums offered by the discount brokers are absurd.
For fun, let's continue the reasoning... $50/day, is that 365 days or 260 days (not counting weekends)? That's $18,250 or $13,000 / year return. To which you need to add short term capital gains tax, anywhere from 10 to 37%.. Assuming 13,000 at lowest tax rate, you're looking to make $14,300. An aggressive fund can probably avg 8%/year, so you're looking at 10% (ease of calculation). which means you need $143,000 and an avg 10% return to make $50/ trading day based on assumptions.
And assuming you are a very good trader. The best traders in history, and none of them were day traders, were able to average an annual return of between 20 and 30% over a period of 1-3 decades. This is extremely rare. The first year I traded full time (quite a few years ago now) I bought and sold over a million dollars worth of equities and options and at the end of the year I had made a grand total of almost exactly one thousand dollars. It was a wonderful and very costly (if you count my time) learning experience however.
But there is often stocks that go up 100% or more in a day. And many that go up 40% in a day. So if you put all your money or a lot of money in a stock, say $200 into stock XYZ and that stock goes up by 140% in one day because of a FDA approval for example, wouldn’t you have $480 and $280 made in that trade.