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With one single ES you trade a synthetical portfolio of $50 x ~2050 = ~$102.500 of notional value at the moment.
With a 6k account your effective leverage is 1 / $6000 / $102.500 = ~17.1 which means that a single move (shark bite) or a
string of losses (paper cuts) of less than 6% (in the ES) less slippage less commissions less margin* will wipe you out.
*The margin part in this calculation only ends your 6k trading career and you get back a remaining amount should there be one.
If there is no remaining amount, the end of your account isn't the end of your liabilities, i.e. you are going to pay your debts.
Ah that makes sense thank you. And yeah it can happen at any given moment but the odds of the futures dropping 6% in an instant seems rather unlikely. And I don't plan on holding overnight at all so I'd be able to stop out of my position and not lose 6k in an instant.
Esp intraday beginners vastly overestimate their winning probabilities and the resulting statistical expectations.
That's why I emphasize the paper cuts which regularly cause the end of intraday scalping accounts without ON business.
In that sense low-margin brokers only speed up the end since they encourage the over-leveraging.
Thank you! But I don't plan on over-leveraging my account, like I said I would just do 1 contract at a time and now max out my account with margin and do 12 contracts. You'd had to be insane to bet where each tick is $150 a tick. That's crazy to think you can make so much money in an instant. Or lose it. I guess that's the addiction. Thanks again!
Yeah I think I don't fully understand the 1 / $6000 / $102.500 = ~17.1 equation here. I understand that technically the portfolio I'm trading is well just call it 100k but I only actually have 6k so a 6% decrease in the portfolio value would actually end up causing me a 100% loss. Am I on the right track with this? What does the 17.1 represent? Thanks!
You are planning to move a single ES contract with only a fraction of 5.85% (or a leverage of 1/5.85% = ~17.1 respectively) of your own capital.
The remaining 94.15% are a virtual loan via your broker.
To make the point clearer: At the beginning you asked about PDT rules which apply to intraday stocks, ETFs etc trades. These rules consider
leverages of >4 as being over-leveraged. Applying such standards you are already starting your race far offside.
Trading with a 6k account size is absolute insanity.
Trading with a 25k account is the minimum threshold at which I believe your probaility of ruin is such that you can successfully make a living at trading the ES. It won't be easy though.
Trading with a 50k account is the sweet spot of where you want to be.
Trust us on here. You are tapping in to hundreds of thousands of hours of screen time.
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