Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
Can you open an account with $3000? and start trading the ES
If you were leaning how to race on the grand prix circuit, would you rather get in a formula one car on a race track and run a few laps against other drivers, or would you rather practice on a simulator? Do you really believe that a simulator would adequately prepare you for racing on a track at 200mph against other experienced professional drivers?
Your ability to confront and handle risk is as much a part of each respective endeavor, as the actual physical ability that is required to perform the activity. Eliminate the risk and fear from either and you might as well... play video games.
BTW: RULE NUMBER ONE BEFORE YOU START TRADING - Make sure you are adequately capitalized!
As the person is from Canada, he can use Oanda to trade the equivalent instruments. You pay a higher price but if you use a higher timeframe then you get a much better payoff proportionally speaking.
Here is a 4 hour chart of the ES today with a possible trade returning $1.02/point. Margin used $99.53CAD per contract. So as you can see cheap does not equal wrong.
Mike, the search for lowest account opening and margins is sadly a result of idiotic competition between brokers and their advertising. Brokers of mid size have encouraged this behavior while customers think this is the right way to start. The saddest part of all is that over leveraging is encouraging a pattern of behavior that will stay with the trader forever. If you play "$500 Chips" and you lose, how encouraged would you be to play on "$50 Chips" to make it back? in other words, your initial pattern of behavior will stay with you for a long time.
At Optimus we decided to have accounts start at 5,000 and that is only because we still need to remain competitive. Yes, we at times lose customers because our competition will open for as low as $2,500 all the way down to $1,000(!), but these accounts disappear as fast as they come.
Sadly it has become all about the RTs, and while competition could encourage lots of creativity, in this case I have to "fight" a war and explain to each person while over leveraging and small deposits is the sure way to lose.
Beyond looking for brokers who are "nice", beginner traders should look for brokers who do have a sense of obligation of being real.
Trading futures and options involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. You may lose more than your initial investment. All posts are opinions and do not claim to be facts. Please conduct your own due diligence. Use only Risk capital when trading Futures.
1 800 771 6748 local 561 367 8686 email [email protected]
if this is your first account, I think it's much smarter to start with a 3,000 dollar account than a 25,000 dollar account. simple reason because you're most likely gonna blow it. so less damage will be done.
you'll be able to see how it is to trade "live". maybe you'll realize trading is not for you. but most importantly, you'll lose only 3,000 dollar. and after blowing this account and you're still convinced to become a trader, then you'll have to save some money to be enough capitalized.
I believe amp futures offers something like that. go for it and good luck.
BudFox you should make a list of all the things you could buy with three grand. Every time I sit down in my $99 dollar office supply store chair to work on trading at my home office I think of how many top of the line Aeron chairs I could have bought. Probably the best trading decision I have made yet was to only put in half the money I was going to figuring I could always just wire in the rest later.
I would also recommend that after you are profitable in SIM you should start out with very tiny real money risk, maybe just a few hundred dollar account and microlots. Oanda has also CFDs on indices and i believe they are a good broker.You can use your futures data and platform besides.
As said above most ppl blow their hard spared money needed for serious trading while learning, i never thought it would happen to me, too. The brokers know, but donīt tell you that, of course (and some of those fraud bucketshop brokers in the forex and CFD-world event start to hinder and betray you, once you start to successfully building up your account).
So never ever start trading with a big account!!
Regarding account size, once you are a very experienced trader and have a high winning expectency and strict riskmanagement you would only need an account that has about the size you need for the margin plus some hundred dollars for the daily loss limit, if hit, anyway.. (then you need to transfer another "loss limit" for the next trading day, of course; if the day was profitable immediately get the money out).
Bucketshops that is what they are and thats why i want to trade there sometimes, because beating a bucket shop reminds me of reminescences of a stock operator.
Great description and right now we see history repeating
1910 bucketshops were made for the small investor who could not afford to speculate with real stocks.
And now we have all those certificates and contracts for differences which are nothing els than a piece of paper with a hard stop making the paper worthless. Most of the customers can get betrayed you are right.
Therefore playing against them can be tough.
I useair to me FXCM for that and yet i have to say they were always fair in order execution.
But for sure you cannot scalp but for a beginner i guess scalping is not the right way to learn trading.
Especially i like the easy integration to ninjatrader using the data of FXCM for free.
If you use ninja in the free version you can trade by writing your own application for the FXCM api.
For a programmer guy like me thats fun.
** Pilots learn to fly with simulators , so why shouldn't traders ?? both crash and burn, if they fail..
My point was, if you can't make money in Sim trading , you shouldn't try trading with real money...
but did you think of your trading plan? do you have one?
