I have been paper trading /SI over the last couple of years in ThinkorSwim and have identified a couple of successful setups. My 10k live account with TDAmeritrade will not allow me to trade futures. Any suggestions on brokers/platforms that I could transfer 10k or less and trade silver futures?

IBKR should do it.

kenjonesr 

I have been paper trading /SI over the last couple of years in ThinkorSwim and have identified a couple of successful setups. My 10k live account with TDAmeritrade will not allow me to trade futures. Any suggestions on brokers/platforms that I could transfer 10k or less and trade silver futures?

You won't find much lower margins than this:

https://www.deepdiscounttrading.com/TradingMargins.html

But it's still $17655 to hold a full size contract overnight.

Check out SIL E-Micro silver. Looks to be 1/5 of full size silver contract. Margin is around 3600. You could trade 2 and scale up with profits. I have never traded that market but I assume it tracks SI pretty well. No idea of liquidity.

My broker (Tradestation) has SI around 18k initial margin so not possible with them but you could trade the SIL.

Whereas the daily volume of the regular July contract is approx. 20000 - 40000 contracts this week, the daily volume of the mini contract (1/5 size) is approx. 2000 - 6000 contracts.

You have to check if bid / ask is ok for your trading system.

I assume that you only trade the contract with the largest volume and not contracts further out in time.

Best regards, Myrrdin

How is it going Ken ? I’m new to this site and saw your post. Curious to see what you decided.