I want to open an margin account with $50,000.00 at one of these brokerages and trade stocks and opt
- Thread starter coplii
- Start date
You should be confident enough to be profitable year in and year out by trading stocks before trading options. Especially when you are going to invest all your savings. Like in any business you need to have business plan before spending one cent on it. I hope you have one.
No, stocks and options. I will only trade stocks in the beginning. I'm pretty sure I can make $500.00 a day.
Yes, I do. Stocks for the first few months than I'll try options with high volume and narrow spreads. The SPY, AAPL, DIA, and QQQ.
It should be no problem to open account. I recommend tdameritrade. Good luck!
rmorse
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If you are going to activity trade both stocks and options in a small account, ticket charges will not help you. For your situation and your description, I would try IB. For a larger account, I can provide other options that would also be per share and per option fees, without ticket charges.
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Look into lower cost brokers like MBtrading and Speedtrader that offer a per share price rather than per trade, and figure out which is better depending on your current strategy.
SPY is the most liquid and volatile of all of the picks you mentioned. AAPL was a great daytrading stock with weekly options before it split 7 for 1, however the premiums don't have as much juice as before, given the more shares outstanding.
Another way to trade SPY is to open a futures account and start trading just one contract of the S&P Emini (symbol /ES). You can paper trade it on various broker platforms before going live. One lot of /ES is equivalent to trading approximately 500 shares of SPY in terms of movement in P&L.
The only way you are going to "make $500 a day" is to massively churn your $50k equity. However, each time you deploy your capital you run the risk of making a mistake. Perhaps another way to use that $50k is to swing trade the ETFs without using overnight margin. Then take whatever capital is left and daytrade the weekly options around your position.
Interactive Brokers or ThinkOrSwim
rmorse
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That sounds "safe", but not often the way it works. I look at trading as a business. Businesses should be well funded to succeed. Most small businesses are funded with the life savings of the partners. Not a safe way to get into business but typically what is available. Sometimes to run a successful business, you have to take a leap of faith that you have planned well and are ready to proceed. For a full time trader that has taken the time to learn the business and has a strategy that has been tested, I would go for it.
In fact I did that a long time ago. It worked out well for me and many others. I know many fail, but that is to be expected when you run your own business.
Bob