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

To: Gone to Money Heaven who wrote (42191)	12/14/2000 9:26:15 PM
From: Patrick Slevin	Respond to of 44573

That's too heavy for me, and I just got a note yesterday or the day prior that Nat Gas will only be traded in 5 cent increments. Add to that, Margins at one of my brokers is $16,200 and $12,000 Maintenance and that means tying up over $28,000 for each contract. It's just not worth it, to me anyway. At one time I kept a lot of money in a Futures account but it makes no sense to me. For example at the moment I have 4 positions in Currencies. Throw a position on in NG and daytrade SP/ND and whammo, I might be margined over a hundred grand. It makes it mentally unsettling. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to a friend at Merrill. I always made fun of Merrill Lynch....I still do. But last winter I moved a lot of stock money there and allowed the accounts to stay somewhat margined. This guy talked me into getting rid of the margin and I slept a hell of a lot better afterwards. I just do not trade well with that kind of pressure. Top that off with the way the Market has performed since last Spring and it is easy to see that guy from ML saved me a lot of stress. So I would be walking into a Sh*tStorm if I traded Natural Gas, I can see that easily enough.