How much do you need to trade futures reddit 

How much do you need to trade futures reddit. I regularly trade with 12:1 leverage on /ES for example, over 100:1 leverage Your strategy and emotional and psychological awareness dictate so much more than the equity put forth. You do NOT need $25K to day trade. If you can pass the combine making $300-$500 per day is possible. 00. I use it with Spotgamma. 30-0. Each point is worth $5, and each round trip trade os $4. Most brokers should also automatically send you a message when the new contract starts to show more volume than the older contract. There are many many free ways to learn about futures trading. U- September. If your 50 pts stop loss order gets filled, your long futures position will get closed and you receive the margin balance, which is 748 - 0. PDT please stop telling new traders that they need $25k to day trade. Up over 20k since 2019 mostly in CL and some ES/MES and copper. 3million, 2021 made 1. I also trade Oil futures daily. CME data. 8. You might be able to negotiate down, but when other brokers charge far less for futures, it is hard to justify staying on TOS/TD. $200 would basically allow you to take 1-2 trades, assuming a ten point stop on MES (micros of ES futures). Happy to hear stories that prove otherwise. So far, the return is on average $600/month (with micro e minis, 1 contract). Yes, it is possible to open accounts with 1K in futures and get day trading margins of $500 on the ES, but it is not wise to do so. Forex is the love of my life though, you need to know your chat before jumping into any trade with FX. Top down approach. From months 1-4, you're only allowed to withdraw a maximum of 1500 (it varies from company to company). You do not want to get liquidated, with my broker they charge a $50 fee if that happens. Look historically for when the volume picks up and trade at those times for that contract. If you want to trade MNQ with 100$ good luck, you will be needing it a lot. The rest would depend on your trade. $166. I had to buy one for Tradovate and the real time market data. The great thing about futures is if you can make $10/day consistently over a number of months, then it's the same process to make $100 or $1000 a day. You can see ($2,000) and not freak out that your margin is going to liquidate you if it doesn’t swing back… then you make crap trades trying to scalp your way out of the hole. The issue I was having is that we got to the support/resistance lines from options data and I felt like I was missing a lot by merely guessing what was happening at the lines real time. Theoretically, if you risk 1% on trade in one day, each trade you have 50% chance to profit 1% gain, then 50% x 1% = 0. 4/1 hr and maybe 15min to find swing highs and lows and more FVGs. The rule of thumb to not risk more than 1-2% per trade is based on math and should be heeded well! You don't need to make a lot of money to be considered a "successful trader". So 50 x 3800$ = 190k $ for a cash account. They've got a ton education that comes with their platform. Then buy all of the data packages & reset your paper account to only $30,000 (they initially give you a million, you just ask iBot how to reset it & it will show you) You need more than $25k to go past PDT even with your paper account. You’ll have to make a Coinbase account, buy USDT on Coinbase as your on ramp and then send it over to KuCoin and you can trade the crypto futures with the USDT that you sent over. So around the 12-14th you will notice the change in volume and will want to start using the new March contract (NQH/MNQH). They both trade on CME, so you'll need CME top of book for real-time prices ($1. That means you only need 40 for one MES contract or 100 for one MNQ contract. Cut your losers quickly. Go into settings > subscriptions. it doesnt matter how much someone spends trading who already knows. Ideally you have a non PDT account, but if you have proven to make a livable income off say 10k cash account trading options/futures, then maybe. 75%+ is a shitload of money. Oh also, 2R isn't nearly enough per trade. Also if you so desire you could use tradingview to actually place trades through tradovate. The margin is $500 for “mini spx 500”. Usually make 100-350 a day but I don't trade everyday. After trying half of the ones on the list I found Quantower to be my preferred software when im looking to daytrade and scalp. As far as account minimums go, how much liquid do I need in my account if I plan to just do 1 point scalp trades? Let's say I do 10 S&P micro contracts per trade and I do 3 trades per day. If my strategy is consistently winning across different market conditions then I can make that $200/pt by adding more For each future you are trading: How much each tick up or down is worth. rickmaz1106. Needing 25K in the account. MES has big players who are smarter than you and everything else is too volatile. To do it go to tradovate settings, "add ons" and look for the tradingview option. I’ll have to look at my broker statements but per side on MES is something like $0. Mostly trading two strategies with 1-3 contracts. It depends at how fast you are at writing code. 5% of your total account equal to $300, 300 / . you need to leave at least enough buffer in the account to cover any potential losses. If you don’t trade using the DOM, level 1 is perfect for you! And you can scalp with using charts only, you don’t need the DOM. The general answer is 1-2%. If you dont already know, goto IB web and in profile area edit your futures experience as max and your liquid networth as well. Yes. 40 on SPY). So to trade even 2-3 micro contracts with much less than $25k you’ll need to ensure your strategy works with stops of like 3-4 points ($0. Also, until you have at least $2k in your account don't even look at futures. Galli_nago. Once you have paid your dues and put a few thousand hours in and learn to trade- you can do pretty well with even 100-200k- this translates to 400-800k with margin. For example, while the minimum needed to begin trading the E-mini S&P 500 Index futures is $12,650, it only The leverage is too much and you can blow out your account too easily. If you buy the same futures again, you must deposit the IMR = $748 again (not $723) as collateral. It's about a $1600 margin requirement in TOS, much cheaper in other brokers. [Futures contracts] are taxed long-term capital gains rates of 60 percent and short-term capital gains rates of 40 percent—regardless of how long the trade was opened for. There are days you gain more. I would guess $2k for margin may be the only requirement. So 1,000 /NQ contracts is 20x the size so 20,000x the price of /NQ. Highly recommend stop losses if you can’t pay frequent attention. ago. Look for 3-5 trades per day choosing only premium setups. I can spend $500 per day just in transaction fees. 1 contract, 50 points. That’s 50% of your bank roll gone in two wrong trades. SmellPrudent. I know this is old but I’ll add my 2 cents. If you are a scalper where every nanosecond matters and constantly in and out of trades then don’t use it. Tradovate for futures like /mes, /mnq and what not. Question. Gustavo_the_pip_papi. Webull is now trading futures! I don't see enough incentive to switch brokers ATM but they offering free data certainly seems disruptive! I'd love too see if/how other FCM react. You need 6 months minimum, preferably 12, of living expenses saved up. to trade a 'full' S&P contract you'd need a much bigger account. Monthly/weekly to find FVGs and overall bias. You don't need to be making $5000 a day to be considered a successful trader. With all I see on reddit and other forums, this return seems too good to be true, even though I have over 200 trades with a 60% wr 1:1. There was also an extensive post about using UVXY not long ago if you scroll down the posts a bit. Investopedia: Futures and Options. I have been looking at Ninjatrader. During the bear market I’m assuming they had to pay too much and decided to ban it lol. As for “enough” Amp futures says you need only 400 to trade one ES contract or 1000 to trade one NQ contract. Not sure where you got $4,000 from. Daytrading futures, forex, stocks, etc. Tradingview has this option available for a couple of different brokers. I know it sounds crazy, but you need a different risk management system. • 3 yr. What you want to do, is keep your account size constant to around that size. If you need $200/day or $52K to live on you need trade $20,000 of stocks in a day assuming a 1% return. So the minimum I would need to have in my account to make these trades every day is $500 correct? $50 x 10. ”. I’m new to futures but love trading them for all of the reasons mentioned by others (leverage, liquidity, scalability, tax advantages, single exchange, full depth of orders if you know the secret feed, etc). Not true, I’m funded and do this full time. If you're averaging anywhere between $100-$300 a day, that's great. • 5 mo. 1 contract is $50, so u can start with $500. On NQ a point is 20 dollars per contract. Question to Futures Scalpers. MES margin is $1,210 per contract. 5) and maybe depth of book ($11) if you think it helps you. killedsomany. This is the amount you need to start trading the mini. I am interested in starting to trade the micro Futures. If you traded with 50k, that is anywhere from $500 to $1000 a day, which is pretty typical for established day traders/scalpers with some experience. I knew a guy in another trading group that was trying out for Top Step, he ended up paying like $1400 in 2 weeks in fees and resets just to The margin minimum is usually 10% higher than the maintenance margin requirements. Margin Requirements from IB's Website I wouldn't trade one contract with $50, I'd put at least $1000 in per contract you want to trade. Once you know the above, you have enough knowledge to trade imo. 50% at 3R makes pretty good money. You need the maintenance margin if you're holding the contract when the futures markets are closed. If you connect the 2 then the data feed that you pay for on tradovate can be used on tradingview. Trading 10-20 Micros instead feels better, I trade the same strategy with the same risk, but I feel so much more relaxed not being exposed to 50% of my trades risk just by placing the first entry. You only really need realistically 25-30k to maintain in your account to make a living. Also, Tradovate does have commissions but they are low. You need to maintain a very high winrate at 2R to be profitable in the long especially with slippage and fees. Just like most professionals with $ 100,000 are making on average $ 500 a day. That’s enough “extensive knowledge. It's the best starting point for anybody. You can't short it because for that you would need margin. If someone only has a $5000 options account, that person needs to trade SPY options not SPX. International-Coat84. My question is, how much money do I need in my account to trade 1 contract of ES? When I look on IB's site, the only figures I can see for margin requirements are $15,541 USD (Intraday Initial) & $14,128 (Intraday Maintenence). Set this 0. The intraday margin for 1 micro contract is $50. 3. Now I’m not making loads but I average 3% ish monthly and am funded 150k. Risking 10% of your total account per trade is nothing but pure gambling and insanity for sustainability. Realize you could have say a $10,000 account equity and trade single MES contracts risking around $50 on each trade. The data fees for CME are waived if you generate more than $20 commissions/month. . 5/1min for confirmations and entries. I trade /ES, /NQ, bonds (2 year and 10 mostly), and /VX. If you are trading 5 lots and get stopped out stops, 20 points are 2 grand. The risk with options is that if you choose the wrong strike, you could lose all your money if the market doesn’t go up to your strike. So scalping wins require at least 1 point to break even, 2 points to Only market data you need. To trade a spread without owning shares is probably an elevated level of trading. For the “micro mini spx 500” u need $250 to start and 1 contract is $5. Look into a trading combine like Topstep before using real money. one mini tick gets it. That's how it is on Tradovate, other brokers might vary on the hours. I prefer both. Eventually you learn a lot, or if you don't learn a lot from it you're not taking advantage of the If you look at their account rules and parameters, you'll realize it. I’m fairly new so take this question for what it’s worth. 25 each way vs. Confirm you have the membership subscription and the market data subscription. You could trade MES options for much less, but I believe that you need at least $2,000 in your account to do any type of futures or futures options trading at TDA. I have three main tactics: 1-Send a buy order at X and a sell order at X+0. Reply More replies. If you have so much money you can buy the future. spiltnuc. Even if you're making less, that's great too. You can trade 2,000 contracts for the same 2000+ tick trade to be a $20,000,000 profit just takes a bit more money to trade more contracts. There's a day margin in Futures and a Maintenance margin. 6% in the average year. 5% = $60,000. I actually view indices as a bonus trade because they offer such good volatility, there is never a dull moment with indices. 5 rr. But honestly trade the size where you not too emotional, I believe this is the best answer. Individual_Sector716. Day trading has to be learned through screen time and understanding risk and trade management. • 9 mo. If you choose AMP Futures, after you have registered and funded your account, they will give instruction for setting up your account, you can choose trading platform and data feed that time. Forex trading is considered gambling as you don’t own any asset, just betting on the price. You want to allow room for wins and losses, and even for price fluctuations in open trades. Ripred177. For support and reistance use whatever allows you to see a bigger timeframe, such as the one hour or 30min chart. You need 2500 minimum to make any trade it doesn't have to be 2500 in value. FT71, Axia or Al Brooks may be descent options for you. What did they quote you? I do like Mack but Thomas Wade is much better for a beginner especially, more detailed explanations of the rules and more live trading videos; and you can get plenty from his free YouTube videos. Nearly 40% day trade for only one month. Tasty is my primary account, but I don’t like it for day trading futures. The vast majority of the time is spent looking at charts, finding setups, doing research, etc. I think 3R tends to be in the sweet spot. Within three years, only 13% continue to day trade. Risking 3% means you are willing to lose $60 per trade. With Bookmap edit: more on contract types - the most traded (AFAIK) S&P index futures contract is the ES, which is actually the S&P 'mini'. 2. If you want to trade futures you could look into the new breed of online prop firms. I think the main point is to look for the times of night that have the highest volume for the different futures. Market data from Ninjatrader comes from CQG. richdiary. The one you make profit with. If you trade with a good broker (I use Tradovate) you can trade NQ contracts with $1k margin (initial, which lowers to $500 after initiating the trade). But to allow any sort of movement before getting liquidated, you probably want to start with at least $500 onwards for a single contract. Problem is trading is never this consistent and straight forward. 1256 rules, no matter how long you hold its taxed at 60% long term cap gains and 40% short term, just for an example making exactly 100k daytrading futures is a tax bill of about 8800 vs if it were stocks it would be closer to 20k+ (depending on whether you itemize or take a standard deduction) plus with futures you dont have to worry about pdt rules and wash sale stuff( taxes can obviously be I had big struggles scaling in with 1-2 Minis per Trade. All of them let you leverage tits up. Trading from the chart isn’t a great experience. 2; 1MES round trip is $0. $0. Yes you can, personally you can trade 5 hour chart quite easily (NASDAQ 100 E-mini). I've been working on a strategy, which I ve backtested over 4 months and paper traded for 4 months also. Yes broker may allow 100 $ per MNQ but you need refund you account after 2-3 stopouts You will also have to pay $5 a month for futures data to be tradable on tradingview regardless of the level of your current subscription. Some discount brokers let you trade a single micro snp500 futures contract (MES) with $40-$50. I'd kill for 50% at 2R. No need to start paying fees to a prop firm before you know if you'll really be able to handle trading non-paper futures. But trading isnt perfect and you WILL have drawdowns sporadically. If you can stand to see 20-50 points go against you before turning "sometimes", MNQ has the best bang for your buck. /es contracts demand anywhere from $500 to $14000 per contract depending on the brokerage and the time the trade is place. Section 1256 contracts are also marked to market at the end of each year; traders can report all realized and unrealized gains and losses With small account I recommend CFD ( fxcm is good ) , example NAS100 ( = NQ ) margin is ca 80 $ and risk per tick is reasonable. It does not matter if you have 5 million dollars to trade with as a newbie trader, this will likely just mean you lose your first 5 million. If you have a cash account you need to put up 100% of the notional value. Let’s say you need $3000 a month. Currently 19 years old. 11 for me. I already got a large portion of my previous gains locked into solid-dividend paying stocks. 44 million dollars. You’d be better off risking $100 on day trading but risking about 10% of your bankroll on a single trade rarely works out well and you’ll have about 9 rolls of the dice and your bust. With Micros it would have looked way different, I already can Tick chart is a must (it just make price much easier to read) Competitive commission (better cheaper than IB. techy91. for IB 1 ES round trip = $4. Reply. If it goes down $1, 1 contract loses $20. I am working on Micro ES and have been wondering to myself how it is that people can scalp that. (Video link below). It is great for options though. Look for 10 point scalps. You would need $1060 to hold the contract open during those hours the futures market is closed. 94, I don't mind about margin requirement, it is not an issue to me ) Reliable DOM. Share. The problem with trading futures is the commission cost is high. For ES the contract size is 50 and the price for Dec expiration is roughly 3800$. Don't listen to these gatekeepers. You need to purchase a monthly subscription I believe. 2 days to 2 weeks typically, then you run it and learn something you overlooked, which then gives you a new hypothesis to backtest, and then another 2 days to 2 weeks of coding, run again, and so on. Reply reply. [deleted] • 1 yr. so If you stick with the default margins ($500 mini, $50 micro) the commissions are cheaper with AMP futures and you have a whole list of platforms that you can connect your account to. Never trade more than 1 micro contract. It takes 4 months of trading before you're even able to withdraw all your profits. Google it. Think of this, tons of people blow up their accounts, devote 2-3, even 4-5 years of their life to find their edge that is consistent. Margin call will happen if 136 pt drop from that point (not from the 1st purchase). if you have $1500 and trade 3 contracts with a margin of $500, you'll get a margin call as soon as a trade goes against you. /NQ right now is $13,922, so 1000 contracts of /NQ right now would be $278,440,000, or 278. the ' notional value ' of the contract is the tick value ($50 - one tick on the price scale) times the index value (currently 3,335) - i. Each point might be worth $2 in MNQ or $20 in NQ, but that's per contract. Because when you lose money in the Casino you can’t declare it as income loss. You will be amazed at how much different the real money feels and effects your trading… no matter how much you treated the paper as though it’s your trading account. You may get some success. 5k) overnight without having to buy a protective call or put, you need ~6-8k in buying power. Versus someone with a $500 equity risking the same. 4. It’s only about 2 things, first is your liquid networth and 2nd your disclosed trading experience. Swing trading seems to be fine just understand margin requirements and for starters maybe avoid holding over the weekend when gaps can possibly hurt you. 80 gain. Draw trend lines, support and resistance. Otherwise trade MES and M2K for a more stable and stress free time. If a person has a $10k futures account trade micros not e mini. AMP uses third party software providers such as CQG, Rithmic, and TT for execution or uses their feed for other platforms. Its not how much you have as Capital. I've been experimenting by using VIX for RS/RW, but as you can imagine it pretty much moves opposite of ES (or SPY). Yes been day trading the ES and only the ES for 7 years, past year made 1. 01; locking me $7. Be warned you'll pay more at least a few other platforms to trade futures, I believe its $2. Different brokers have different packages that combine different things, but you just need CME. 5%. The question you need to be asking is: what are people's annual P&L averages and how many trades do they execute a day/week? My P&L last 3 years: -2020: 45% w/ 10 trades a week using 4 instruments -2021: 64% w/ 5 trades a week using 7 instruments -2022: -44% w/ 2 trades a week using 7 instruments If you can’t afford 100 shares of a $20 stock, you’ll be able to buy a LEAP for maybe 2/3rds of that. What I would love to learn from the more At that level you can have a trade stop loss at -200 pips and only lose $20. Finally, unlike other financial products you might be used to trading, futures trades require you to post margin on a per contract basis. 4 - 6 hours a day is pretty average for me, sometimes more. However, these day traders are very active – accounting for 12% of all day trading activity. I use pairs to hedge, but it does not always work either. But minimum 2000 USD in foreign currency for cash account to be able to convert to USD and trade options in that currency. That being said, you need to have an account that qualifies you for trading in options. If you want to use an offshore broker to bypass PDT then you can definitely use about 2-5K. They might trade 23/6 but they are only sufficient volume for a much smaller amount of time. If this was the case, most newbie traders would not be trading. There’s no minimum requirement if you are only planning on buying, but for spreads you’ll need $2000 for a margin account ManikSahdev. Currently I live frugally and reinvest most of what I get into more challenges. If you get even half but consistent and decent at trading futures, you won’t do be doing it as side hustle, either you do it or you not. I recommend that you subscribe to a pro account & put only $500 in there. I've converted my account to cash but do I still need a minimum of 2500cad to be allowed to trade options? Not taking on any short positions, just buying then selling contracts for profit. You can literally throw $10k in an account, if you're good make $1k a day on a one lot, not even have to scale up, and still be the top 1% of income earners in the world. Now I have 20 available to me. Made around half of that total in one day in CL right after the Ukraine situation kicked off with insane volatility on a day where it moves 4-5%. For example, E-mini S&P 500 futures contract would roughly give you 20:1 leverage, but if you’re trading SPY options you need to buy way OTM strikes to get that kind of leverage. I simply target breakeven as 1 tickand still have 4 bucks. When you declare income loss in your tax returns the government deducts it for your taxes and you get some of the money back. •. If you're going to pay for something, I recommend Al Brooks course for $400, more information about price action than you can imagine. You can trade MES but you'll need $50 in order to trade 1 contract. Hold for 2-8 days and profit 2000+ ticks with 25 contracts, profit would be $250,000. Don't use your entire account in one trade, the other $50 should be used as a safety cushion to keep from getting liquidated. To trade futures options, you’d need to be approved for futures and level 4 options then special futures options approval. Find stuff you follow and stick to trading those; I usually stick to /rty, /es, and /ng. On daily chart: SMAs 21,50,100,200. 60%+ is killing it. 50 * 50 = $723 ($25 loss). But your account fluctuates, sometimes you have multiple wins or loses. It costs about 150 dollars to take their evaluations (when you time the promo discounts, they often seem to be at 50% off). The way u lose money is how u mange your strategy. 50 in commissions. • 1 yr. 9 million thanks to covid and shorting the market then when Feds started QE with 0% interest rates went long ES, as well as taken long options which I hardly ever touch options. $25k at least to trade above PDT without commissions in the US. Once you get familiar with the desktop and mobile app it makes defining risk with various strategies super easy. If you want to hold any of the big indexes (not /rty; ~3. Honestly I cannot trade with stops on MNQ, let alone NQ. Futures leverage is based on volatility. Profitable day traders make up a small proportion of all traders – 1. Research the PDT rule OR trade using a cash account. But 30-35k margin account is the best and preferable. 14 one way, 8 bucks. So I make roughly 4k monthly as I’m at 90% profit split percentage. What these things are (to trade /mes): spx, the s and p, and /mes. So roughly $3000 a month after tax. You have to pay for both unfortunately. You know more than 99% of the general population. You might want to consider NinjaTrade or Tradovate as they are, I believe, the most popular futures brokers. 7k is more than enough to trade futures. Account size doesn’t matter but daily contract volume does, the more you trade the cheaper it’ll be. The chances that someone blows up within that time frame is quite large. ill teach you for $299. This is shown in the image below. e. And to trade crypto futures your best bet is KuCoin. 65 each way for options. If you take 3 trades a day, one loss at $100 Two wins at $200 you’ll bring home $300 Four days a week = $1200 x 4 = $4800. Award. That's why you will need backup reserves when starting out going full time. Trade ES and NQ one contract. 4 million and 2020 made 5. This is based on a safe sharpe ratio of 1, which is what most professionals aim for. It's better to be over funded and under leveraged, rather than over leveraging a tiny account. Stick to SPY options until you’ve spent the required (like hundreds) of hours learning to understand futures and then futures options. TPO chart, Order Flow (something I want to try to add to my trading tool, haven't learn about them) But once you have some experience trading, you should be aiming for 1% - 2% growth per day, with some losses scattered here and there. This year the December contract (NQZ/MNQZ) expires on the 16th. Most professionals with more than $ 10,000,000 in their trading account are making on average $ 50,000 a day. Additionally, if you SL 20 trades in a row you are only down $200 (or 10% of your account) which isn't that difficult to recover from. I am at tradestation. After five years, only 7% remain. 750. You can think of /NQ as 20x the price listed. Yes the fees are way to high, and if you plan to do this long term you will quickly recoup that $1500 in fees not being paid. Then sell calls against the LEAP. If you have about $2500 you can go to Jigsaw trading. Hopefully eventually they get their act together and put a table of margin/day margin requirements together with commissions. If you want to trade futures, I would just make a tradingview account and paper trade the underlying you want to trade on their software. M- June. Trading futures you can. That may be well within correct risk for day trading but you really need to know your numbers to verify this. 15. ux ih yr vy sm in uc ec gl rf