Trading Deposit and Margin
When you open your trading account with your day trading brokerage, you will deposit an initial amount of money that will be used to calculate your available trading margin. Trading Margin is the amount of money that you have available during trading, and must exceed the margin requirements set by the exchange (and your brokerage). Depending upon the amount of your deposit, some markets may not be available, because their margin requirements are too high.
Some popular day trading markets that will be available if only the minimum amount ($5,000) is deposited are :
Currency Futures
Stock Index Futures
- YM - The Dow Jones futures market
- ES - The S&P 500 futures market
- ER2 - The Russell 2000 futures market
- CAC40 - The CAC40 futures market
- HSI - The Hang Seng futures market
Commodity Futures
- ZG - The Gold 100 troy ounce futures market
- ZI - The Silver 5000 ounce futures market
Agricultural Futures
- ZC- The corn futures market
- ZW- The wheat futures market
One popular futures market that is missing from the above list is the DAX (The DAX futures market). This is because the DAX has a minimum margin requirement of approximately 8,000 EUR, so it is only available to traders that have deposited at least 8,000 EUR into their trading account.
