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Hi, I'm from toronto looking into day trading either Futures or Stocks. From what I read online, Future is better to day trade than stocks because of better margin and leverage, better regulated(less manipulation? is order flow better than reading lvl2?), better tax treatment (Only for US citizen?) and No Pattern Day trading rule requiring $25000 (Again only for US citizen?). I think commission is a lot higher trading futures when you need to trade big lots because of large account size? Thanks for suggestions.
About myself, learning to day trade futures using sierrachart with amp futures. Maybe looking into IB to day trade stocks.
if your trading size and have proof of your size almost everyone will give you a discount. I wouldn't say you need to trade huge size. 5 lots with 5 pts es is $1250 maybe that's not a lot of cash for you but its easy to get in and out of trades and trading 1-15 lots usually isn't that hard to get a fill on.
-P
"Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is, and you must bend to its power or live a lie"-Miyamoto Musashi
With futures you have a better way to get exposure to a variety of markets than you have with individual company stocks or ETFs. When you can trade any type of market (metals, agriculture, stocks, currencies, bonds, etc) you are never short on good opportunities, only time to analyze them all.
And lots of leverage. If you are good you will make money faster
As already mentioned, if trading Index, futures is a way to go, in stocks however do not trade naked futures without hedging.
I'm not sure how those are done in US compared to here, but I'm sure tasty can serve you as reference there.
Generally, even with Index, I try to hedge with options, by selling them since we also have weekly options here which experience theta decay and give some good measure of safety, and if markets happen to be range bound, you end up making at least your cost from those option sells.
Equity cash stocks haven't been that attractive for day traders here for some time, now brokers are trying to make it attractive by making it brokerage free, but still ppl prefer to go with futures and options, especially Intra-day traders.
If you have higher trading frequency and number of lots, you should be also able to negotiate with brokers for less charges.
Futures are attractive instruments to trade, but can be quite damaging to health as well, trade safe.
Hope that helped in some way