Futures Margin Requirements

[ashantt]

Will somebody please answer this for me?:

I want to start day trading s&p e mini futures on Think or Swim. How does the margin work. I know as a PDT I get 4:1 for stocks, is it the same for futures? Or is it totally different.

Say, I have 40 K in my account how many contracts can I purchase without using margin if I am using the entire bank at one time and how many contracts can I purchase using intraday margins.

Much obliged.

 

[mindtrade]

https://www.thinkorswim.com/tos/displayPage.tos?webpage=servicesOrderTypes&displayFormat=hide#

Click on the futures then stock index tab and you will see the margin amount for the index futures.

You will always be buying the future contracts on margin and $5,625.00 is the margin so if you have 40k in your account you can purchase 7 contracts. They might have an intraday margin rate of half that but I don't use TOS so I do not know.

If you plan on trading futures a lot you will probably not want to use TOS due to their high commissions of $3.50.