$300 margin for S&P500 e-minis

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MarketMoverTrader

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My Broker has offered for me to start trading the S&P e-minis for $300 per contract (usually $500). (y)

My round trip commission would go up from $4.80 to $4.95.

This seems really low. Has anyone else traded this market at margins this low, or lower?
Just interested. Thanks.
 
How comfortable are you with the possibility of your account value going negative if you got stuck in a position (e.g. if Globex went down) and the market moved 6 points against you (assuming you used that leverage to its maximum).
 
I'm not comfortable with the idea of that, but I'm not comfortable with the idea of being hit by a car - I still leave my house on that calculated risk. It could happen, but I've been very successful at trading the S&P e-minis so I think this should more benefit me than harm me. I was trading a $500 margin until now anyway, which is already nice and low. If I wasn't a good trader then this would just be an opportunity to accelerate my losses I suppose.

My issue isn't with whether I should take it or not, but rather just wondering if this is as low a margin as anyone else here has had.
 
MarketMoverTrader said:
I'm not comfortable with the idea of that, but I'm not comfortable with the idea of being hit by a car - I still leave my house on that calculated risk. It could happen, but I've been very successful at trading the S&P e-minis so I think this should more benefit me than harm me. I was trading a $500 margin until now anyway, which is already nice and low. If I wasn't a good trader then this would just be an opportunity to accelerate my losses I suppose.

My issue isn't with whether I should take it or not, but rather just wondering if this is as low a margin as anyone else here has had.
Click to expand...

You are a successful trader trading the S&P is that $200 drop in margin requirements really going to make any difference?
 
If my margin drops by 40% my ROI per contract traded increases by 60%!
So yes, a big difference.

I earn $50 per point on the S&P e-minis. This has always neatly worked out to a 10% ROI on every contract traded on a $500 margin. Now that same $50 per point earned will be 16% per contract traded at $300 each. Or I can look at it as the ability to trade 2 contracts for only $100 more than the usual 1 contract at $500.

I retro-calculated all my trades for last month. If I had been trading with a $300 margin my ROI on contracts traded (which was 84% for the month) would have been 140%.
 
MarketMoverTrader said:
If my margin drops by 40% my ROI per contract traded increases by 60%!
So yes, a big difference.

I earn $50 per point on the S&P e-minis. This has always neatly worked out to a 10% ROI on every contract traded on a $500 margin. Now that same $50 per point earned will be 16% per contract traded at $300 each. Or I can look at it as the ability to trade 2 contracts for only $100 more than the usual 1 contract at $500.

I retro-calculated all my trades for last month. If I had been trading with a $300 margin my ROI on contracts traded (which was 84% for the month) would have been 140%.
Click to expand...

If you are going to trade that close to the wire and only meet the minimum margin requirements, then it is going to make a big difference.
 
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