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Strategies & Market Trends : Systems, Strategies and Resources for Trading Futures -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: David who wrote (34997)	10/2/1999 3:34:00 PM
From: keith massey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 44573

David what have you found out about interactive brokers' back up systems? Can you call them to place an order? If so, how long does it take? It looks like there are lots of people on the thread using this system that could probably answer this question better. Also, I dont quite understand day trading margins in E-mini, could you explain The "true" value of a single E-mini contract is $50 * the quote ($12.50 for .25 for the lowest tick value). So with the S&P mini's at 1300 a single contract is valued at $65,000. Margin works on a percentage basis on stocks. So with a 50% margin you only need to put up half the money to buy the stock. To make trading a little simplier margin doesn't work off percentage in most futures but off a set value for each contract. So in Linds. case you need to put up $4,600 to buy a contract worth $65,000 which works out to 7% margin (you put up 7% they put up 93%). However if the Emini's rally to 1350 the contract is now worth $67,500 but you still put up $4,600. Of course Lind resets these numbers so if the contract rallies to $100,000 Lind will raise their margin and publish the numbers to the customer. Now after you buy the contract you have something called a Maintenance Margin. This is the amount you need to keep in the account. So you need $4,600 to buy the contract but only need $3,800 in the account after you buy for Lind. Lets say you have $12,600 in the account...normally you could only buy two contracts. So you buy two for $9,200. However with the maintenance margin now you only need $7,600 to maintain the contracts and have $5,000 free so you could buy one more contract for a total of three contracts with your $12,600. Now for day trading it get even more interesting. With Lind. if you are day trading you can buy a single contract for $1,600 as long as it is closed out before days end and you set your stops right away. The maintenance margin is only $1,000 for day trading. So with the $12,500 account you could theoretically buy 7 contracts then right away buy another 5 for a total of 12 contracts. WARNING...although this is how the margin works you would take a huge risk by using a .015% margin ($1000/contract). I am just explaining how it works. To thread: feel free to correct my math if I screwed up. Best Regards KEITH