Daytrading margins

C2
1

Do you support daytrading margins for futures? Specifically, the full margin for ESH05 is $4000, but lots of brokers, including Interactive brokers and TradeStation will allow smaller margins for daytraders. For example, TradeStation uses $1000 for ESH05.



DTG

2

Gosh, shows how little I know. I wasn’t even aware that there were different margins for daytrading futures contracts.



So the answer is: we don’t support it currently. To be honest, I’m not sure it’s something I can add right away. It would involve a major change in the way margins are calculated, and I think programming efforts are probably better spent on some other cool projects.



But I will make a note of the request, and if it seems to get a lot of traction, I’ll move it up the list.



Matthew

3

So the answer is: we don’t support it currently. To be honest, I’m not sure it’s something I can add right away



I suggest you do it the same way the brokers do. First you would have to nominate the account as a daytrading account, then for daytrading accounts just set the margin as 10% of the current margin between the hours of 8AM EST and 4:15 EST.



I have been quoted margins as low as 7% of the overnight margin, but 10% is near enough. And you could set the account flag, so its not abused.



DTG