Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Margin requirements lowered last month - more than DOUBLED today

Well...how about that, margin requirements for futures are effectively doubled for the TF Russell 2000 futures $8,250 from $4,300. Maintenance margin is now $8,250 from $3,250. If you are in a long trade and down...the last thing you need is this margin requirement increase. In all of my systems, I plan on everything that can go wrong will...especially this kind of stuff.

On monday, there were a lot of accounts that were blown out in debt condition. That means that accounts that started the day with a positive balance actually closed the day with a negative balance. When ever FCM's get into debt account situations, as they did recently with Silver, the exchanges dramatically attempt to reduce FCM risk by raising margin requirements dramatically.

S&P 500, Nasdaq and Dow futures are next...look out...there is a lot more downside coming.

This market is not for amateurs...day trade margins are not available at Interactive Brokers...soon there will be no day trade margin at all on any of these markets.
 
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