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Strategies & Market Trends : Buy and Sell Signals, and Other Market Perspectives -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Qone0 who wrote (89171)	1/19/2017 5:44:10 PM
From: codfish23	Read Replies (6) \| Respond to of 218408

I would love to do a brokerage comparison on this site. I'll go first. I use TD Ameritrade, they let me trade the ES, the S&P mini contract. I started out telling them I wanted to limit it at 100K, and that lets me trade up to 20 of the mini contracts at a time. Each contract bought or sold represents $50 per S&p point. So for example, if I buy 10 contracts and sell for a 6 point gain, I make $500 per point, so $3K. At TD Ameritrade, the commission per trade (each buy and sell) is roughly 2.65 plus a .70 exchange fee. So if I buy a contract , and sell at a 1 point profit, commissions eat almost 7 bucks of the $50, but if I hold on for 10 points, it's only $7 0f $500. I also can trade gold futures ($33 per point), and Nazdaq futures ($20 per point): the commissions are slightly less, I think. The large contract is $3500 per point, I think, so you would need to put up a $350 k limit I guess. Ameritrade doesnt trade the large. I like the flexibility of the small contracts, I can size into and out of positions much more easily. Thats it for me, I'd love to hear what others are doing

To: Qone0 who wrote (89171)	1/19/2017 7:10:16 PM
From: Mevis	1 Recommendation Recommended By GROUND ZERO™ Respond to of 218408

I use optionsexpress and its OK aside from the occasional freeze of the mobile platform...... The ES is on speed, the mini's bounce around like a white house intern, so be prepared to play ping pong... Suggestion......get a reliable quote service that will give you the large SP quote so u can trade off that and avoid pivoting back and forth with the mini. Final thing.....start with at least 50k. If u don't have that, save for it. Follow sensible stops and be prepared for a few stop outs. Be persistent and you'll get a good entry for a profitable trade. Your numbers are right....5 minis = 1 large SP.......1 gold = 10 micro gold

To: Qone0 who wrote (89171)	1/19/2017 7:17:18 PM
From: GROUND ZERO™	Respond to of 218408

Looks like codfish23 gave you a pretty good introduction... but, simply to answer the question, the margins vary with each futures broker or merchant... but generally, for the large @P the initial margin is about $25K and maintenance about $18K... but this varies with broker firm... each full point move is $250.00 so a move from 2261.60 to 2262.60 is a $250.00 move for the large contract, the mini is a $50.00 move per tick... also, the volume for the large contract has been so reduced since most everyone is trading the mini that the large contract may actually be halted at some point down the road... The guys I know on the trading floor of the CME, while they could just as easily trade the large contract, they only trade the mini and in very large numbers since it takes 5 mini contracts to equal the value risk of the big one... the volume for the large one is pretty thin these days... The best broker, that's a mystery... they're all about the same... just do a search for low cost online futures brokers, I just did and this link popped up, just compare services and one that has a good trading platform... nerdwallet.com GZ