Quick question on the trading of futures

H

hdawg87

I obviously do not trade futures and have no plans on trading futures but was looking at a buy order for the ES in my TOS account and noticed that I would not have to initially have to put up any capital when buying a contract. My question is:

Do you have to put up a specific amount of money to buy a contract or do you just have to settle for the difference in the price when you sell the contract?

An example:

You buy contact X at $100. The price goes down and you sell at $90. Do you have to initially put up margin to hold the contract or just settle for the $10 when you sell it?

Obviously this is a really easy question but I couldn't really find an answer for it yet.
 
Quote from hdawg87:

I obviously do not trade futures and have no plans on trading futures but was looking at a buy order for the ES in my TOS account and noticed that I would not have to initially have to put up any capital when buying a contract. My question is:

Do you have to put up a specific amount of money to buy a contract or do you just have to settle for the difference in the price when you sell the contract?

An example:

You buy contact X at $100. The price goes down and you sell at $90. Do you have to initially put up margin to hold the contract or just settle for the $10 when you sell it?

Obviously this is a really easy question but I couldn't really find an answer for it yet.
More...

Yes, you would only lose the 10 bucs. But... before you enter the transaction you must put up a "performance bond". RTH it would be from 500$ to 1700$ approx.


rj
 
Before you send your order (assuming you are not set to shift-click send!) you will see the order confirmation page on the TOS platform, look at buying power effect on the confirmation page, that will tell you what your margin requirement is.
 
Well that was what was confusing me. When I did that, the buying power affect was N/A. Any ideas? Am I just not approved to trade futures and so I can't see what the buying power affect would be? I don't think it's my account size.
 
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