How Much Money To Day Trade

How Much Money To Day Trade?

A frequent question often asked is how much money to day trade. The answer to that question depends upon what you want to day trade. If you want to day trade stocks you will need $25,000 USD in your account. But if you want to day trade Futures you can day trade with much less like even only $500 because there is no day trading rule within the futures markets.

What To Day Trade Stocks, Futures, CFD’s, Forex, Crypto?

So asking how much money to day trade you first must answer or find out what you want to day trade either stocks or something else. For only stocks have a day trading rule requiring $25,000 in your account whereas everything else does not.

So if you don’t have $25,000 in your account and want to day trade you can opt to trade the Futures markets instead. Or if you prefer you could swing trade stocks holding overnight and that is not considered a day trade. Or you can gap stocks at the end of the day and sell the next morning or even setup a limit order to sell in pre-market and often you will get filled before the market opens. These are not considered day trades because you bought one day and sold the next.

Another way around the day trading rule is to trade the CFD market, you can make as many trades as you wish to make and you can get margins down to $25 and make $1 per tick and even incur no commission cost.

When you day trade stocks you’ll be given 4:1 margin so you’ll then have access to $100,000 USD for you to use to trade with even though you only have $25,000 in your account. Which will give you a decent amount of money to trade TSLA, PLTR, APPL, NVDA, etc.

If however you want to trade Futures the cost involved is mainly how much they require in your account to open up one contract long or short, and that is called margin requirement. Each instrument has it’s own requirement and each broker as well. Interactive Brokers is the most expensive requirement at $10,000-$15,000 per contract on each instrument like Gold, Oil, Dow, S&P, Nasdaq. 

This means they will hold this money in your account while you have an open position but when you close your position the money will be available to you again.

So if you want to trade Futures with Interactive Brokers you would need about $20,000 in your account, enough for margin and enough for a little buffer to lose money.

Day Trading For Very Cheap Very Easy To Do

You could easily trade for much cheaper, there are many Futures brokers that offer day trading margin for $500 for each instrument. There are CFD brokers that let you trade the indexes like YM and NQ and ES for only $25 per contract at $1 per tick profit. This is an excellent way to go especially when you first start trading. Then you can move to $2 per tick, then $3 per tick etc. 

You can move up more slowly to give you time to learn and build up your account, to help you not get nervous and make mistakes with small money rather than add to being more nervous by losing too much money and then you become scared to take more trades.

You can do the same thing with stocks where you trade with 100 shares, meaning $1 per tick.Then move to 200 shares which is $2 per tick. 1000 shares is $10 per tick. Stocks like PLTR and TSLA move many ticks meaning you can make tremendous money. So for both stocks and futures you can day trade and make tremendous money, but it’s all about getting the direction right and the only way to do that with consistency is to use the right day trading system like I do.

So in answer to how much money to day trade really depends upon what you want to day trade whether stocks or futures market and also what broker you use whether stock broker, futures broker or CFD broker.

How Much Money To Day Trade?

Interactive Brokers Stocks ($30,000)
Interactive Brokers Futures ($20,000)
Regular USA Broker Futures ($2,000)
CFD Broker Futures Market ($500)

You might ask (is CFD Brokers good?) my answer would be yes they are good, suprisingly good. I have personally seen and personally know somebody who uses VT Markets and uses her Iphone to trade with and follows my system and makes amazing money for really cheap and on top of that she doesn’t pay for commission costs. 

It takes just one minute to withdrawl money to her bank account. Their customer service is really super good. VT Markets is not available to USA residents but I’m sure there are good CFD brokers available to USA residents. I myself have used Interactive Brokers since 2002.

If you would like to see how much money to day trade with Interactive Brokers feel free to watch my day trading videos below which you can also find at my YouTube channel How To Day Trade. You’ll see me day trading everyday and can learn a great deal from watching real day trading and see how well my day trading system works, I think you’ll be amazed by it.