I am fairly new to trading the ES, but I was under the impression that to trade one contract on the ES I was required to have at least $2000 in my account, plus a little cushion so I don’t get liquidated if a trade goes against me.
Looking it up today I am seeing other people saying you need $500 to carry one contract on the ES, not $2000.
Can someone give me a clear answer on this? I am not sure how many contracts I could trade at a time with my current account size.
The margin is $500, so this means if you have $500 you can trade 1 ES, but if the price moves against you 1 tick, you’ll be liquidated.
if you have $2000 you can trade 1 contract and be in a max loss unrealised position of -$1500 before being liquidated/
Got it, that makes perfect sense. Thanks so much. I had originally planned to ensure that I had at least 3k per contract I traded to make sure I had some cushion but I guess that was actually way more than I needed.
That is only intraday margin. You will need the initial margin if you want to carry it into the next trading session. The margin may also change sometimes depending on the volatility of the market, so keep an eye out on. https://ninjatrader.com/margin-details/?symbol=ES