With $ 6,000 you need to be able to use the margin to trade futures within a day to meet lower margin standards.
So with said, if you are only going to trade futures like I do, you don't need to use IB. I would use a discount brokerage like AMP futures.
If you go this route, you can chat online with them to setup the account correctly to use Ninja Trader.
The benefit of NT is that it is a free 3rd party chart maker that once you get your account setup, you will be able to demo trade until you are able to duplicate a profitable setup in real time.
Then you pay a small monthly fee to use NT once you want to do live real money trades. If you want to not use their order entry system, I think you don't even have to pay this fee, but for me its worth it so I can have automated orders working without staring at the screen all day.
Let's now design a simple trade so that any of loonies that come after me saying this can not be done will be proven wrong.
Go to custom order in NT. Set a 4 tick stop and a 4 tick profit target for ES chart 5 min. Name this custom order setup 4v4 even. Now you wait for your setup. You see it, you either limit in or market in long or short with this "even" order already setup. Once in, the trade will move to either the target or the stop. Let's assume this is real money and you already finished demo trading and assume you are just going to take this one trade for the day. If the target is hit, you will now have $ 6,050.00 account balance. If the stop is hit, you will now have 5,950.00 for the day.
Using my trusty calculator on my computer, you have just risked less than 1% of your total account balance and at no time were you at risk of blowing out your account. Yes, trading is that easy. However, the hard part is accepting the fact that some days either you will make a mistake or your setup will not work and you will take that $ 50 loss on the trade. You need to have the psychological strength not to jump into another trade to make that $ 50 back since then you are now gambling not trading. Instead at the end of the day, look at your chart and determine why you took a loss for the day. Did you not draw your lines correctly. Did the setup not work. Remember even with a 80% win rate, you will still have some losing trades. Also, like today I just made some money, I need to have the psychological strength not to take another trade just because I want to make more money.
Trading is about emotions, where the market moves up or down due to fear and greed. However, to be successful, you as a trader need to strive to not have emotions when trading. For finding a profitable setup, there are free threads in ET from different traders and there are trading books out there. You need to practice till you are proficient and you need to be patient to wait for a good setup. You really just need 1 good setup per day to make money. As one author wrote, a trader who just makes 1 ES point per day of profit has the potential to make $ 180,000 per year. Note I am not saying how many contracts. You can increase contract size as your ability to trade correctly grows.
So with said, if you are only going to trade futures like I do, you don't need to use IB. I would use a discount brokerage like AMP futures.
If you go this route, you can chat online with them to setup the account correctly to use Ninja Trader.
The benefit of NT is that it is a free 3rd party chart maker that once you get your account setup, you will be able to demo trade until you are able to duplicate a profitable setup in real time.
Then you pay a small monthly fee to use NT once you want to do live real money trades. If you want to not use their order entry system, I think you don't even have to pay this fee, but for me its worth it so I can have automated orders working without staring at the screen all day.
Let's now design a simple trade so that any of loonies that come after me saying this can not be done will be proven wrong.
Go to custom order in NT. Set a 4 tick stop and a 4 tick profit target for ES chart 5 min. Name this custom order setup 4v4 even. Now you wait for your setup. You see it, you either limit in or market in long or short with this "even" order already setup. Once in, the trade will move to either the target or the stop. Let's assume this is real money and you already finished demo trading and assume you are just going to take this one trade for the day. If the target is hit, you will now have $ 6,050.00 account balance. If the stop is hit, you will now have 5,950.00 for the day.
Using my trusty calculator on my computer, you have just risked less than 1% of your total account balance and at no time were you at risk of blowing out your account. Yes, trading is that easy. However, the hard part is accepting the fact that some days either you will make a mistake or your setup will not work and you will take that $ 50 loss on the trade. You need to have the psychological strength not to jump into another trade to make that $ 50 back since then you are now gambling not trading. Instead at the end of the day, look at your chart and determine why you took a loss for the day. Did you not draw your lines correctly. Did the setup not work. Remember even with a 80% win rate, you will still have some losing trades. Also, like today I just made some money, I need to have the psychological strength not to take another trade just because I want to make more money.
Trading is about emotions, where the market moves up or down due to fear and greed. However, to be successful, you as a trader need to strive to not have emotions when trading. For finding a profitable setup, there are free threads in ET from different traders and there are trading books out there. You need to practice till you are proficient and you need to be patient to wait for a good setup. You really just need 1 good setup per day to make money. As one author wrote, a trader who just makes 1 ES point per day of profit has the potential to make $ 180,000 per year. Note I am not saying how many contracts. You can increase contract size as your ability to trade correctly grows.
