How to Start Trading Emini Futures

Emini futures, or simply eminis, are smaller-sized contracts of "full-grown" futures contracts that have been around for decades. Unlike the latter that have been traded on physical exchanges, eminis have always been traded electronically, allowing retail traders with access to the Internet to compete against institutional traders from the comfort of their homes or home based offices.

It is not difficult to become an emini trader, although it can be much harder to become a consistently profitable one. There are only a few basic things one needs to do to start a career of an emini day trader. That's what most emini traders are: they are really day traders, which means they never hold their positions overnight, but finish their trading by the end of a daily trading session.

First, you open an account with an emini broker. There are many of them out there. Because of the great popularity of emini futures among small traders, these days even traditional stock brokers, such as Ameritrade, offer eminis for trading. These brokers should be avoided though, as they charge relatively large commissions that can easily eat all your trading profits. Basically, any broker that does not offer at least $5 per round turn, should be avoided. The overwhelming majority of regular stock brokers are in this category, the only notable exceptions being Interactive Brokers and Tradestation Securities.

Some brokers offer better margins than others. That's also a very important thing to consider when choosing a broker. The smaller the margin, the more emini contracts you can trade and thus, assuming your trading has a positive edge, the more money you are likely to make. Some brokers offer margins as low as $500 per contract for intraday trading for most if not all emini products. Others are more conservative, but still offer discounts for daytraders. Those are the two groups worth considering. It may happen that brokers who offer lower margins, charge more in commissions, although it is possible to find brokers who are good when it comes to both margins and commissions.

Once you opened an account, you need to fund it. Makes sure you have enough money to safely trade at least two contracts. The key word here is "safely." Suppose that your broker's intraday margin is $1500 per contract. Add $1000 to this as a cushion and you will come up with $2500 per contract to trade safely, meaning you would need at least $5000 to trade two emini contracts without getting overly stressed out.

Now, you only need to choose a solid trading platform. Most brokers offer NinjaTrader, a popular trading platform, and many others as well. If you a client of Interactive Brokers, you will be able to choose from among a few good trading platforms that in addition to NinjaTrader include Bracket Trader, Zeroline Trader, Button Trader, and a few others, lesser known.

Obviously, you also need to come up with a winning strategy and test it on a simulator before you commit your money, but that's another thing that goes beyond the scope of this article.

You can find more about emini trading systems and strategies on the author's site at: http://www.eminimethods.com/emini_trading_courses.html

Waldemar Puszkarz, Ph.D., is a web veteran with 15 years of web surfing under his belt. By training, he is a theoretical physicist, but his interests are much broader than science and include trading financial markets, sports betting, poker, and researching online business opportunities. He is also an avid book reader and sports afficionado. Currently he is making his living mostly as a day trader. He has been in the trading trenches for almost a decade during which he has traded a variety of financial instruments. He is the owner and webmaster of Eminimethods.com (http://www.eminimethods.com) which provides free common sense trading education and simple trading systems for e-mini and stock markets as well as reviews of honest online business opportunities in Meet HOBO section of his site.