Leverage Your Stock Trading Skills To Trade Futures

Why More Traders Prefer Futures

Viewed through a trader's lens, futures resemble stocks, as both can be actively traded. However, futures offer several unique advantages.

Advantages of Trading Futures

Reduce your financial barrier to entry with margins as low as $50
Day trade without restriction with no pattern day trading (PDT) rule
Trade 24/5, regardless of time zones or conventional market hours
Buy and short easily, with no uptick rule or hard-to-borrow list
Diversify your portfolio by adding a layer of versatility to your investment strategy

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Reasons Stock Traders Add Futures To Their Trading Portfolios

No Pattern Day Trader Rule Or Minimum Balance Requirement

Stock traders using margin must maintain a balance of $25,000 to actively day trade as required by the Pattern Day Trader (PDT) rule. When trading futures vs. stocks, there are no rules requiring a minimum account balance or restricting how many trades can be placed in a week. As a futures trader, you can trade long or short multiple times a day or week without worrying about day trading restrictions. All futures trading relies on margin, essentially a good-faith deposit required to control a futures contract. This good faith margin deposit is what enables future traders to buy and sell with greater leverage.

Leverage

One of the key benefits of futures trading vs. stocks is leverage. Most stocks only offer 25% day trading or 50% overnight margin when buying or shorting a stock. With futures you can put up less than 5% to control a position that represents a major market index or commodity which allows for potentially greater profits. Of course, with greater leverage comes increased risk and the potential for large losses. Make sure you always have a risk management plan in place when trading leveraged futures.

No Issues With Shorting

One of the biggest challenges stock traders face every day is the inability to short stocks and ETFs easily and consistently. This is often caused by a shortage of available long positions at a supporting brokerage which are needed to borrow those shares for a trader to enter a short position. With futures trading, entering a short position is seamless. Every future can be shorted, for any number of contracts, at any time.

Diversification

Futures provide exposure and simplified access to a wide variety of financial markets and commodities which may otherwise be difficult to trade through the purchase of individual stocks. In addition to major market indices like the E-mini S&P, Nasdaq and Dow Jones, you can trade markets that affect our everyday lives like crude oil, gold and silver, bonds, even coffee and many others. Overall, futures contracts offer you greater diversification than other types of highly correlated investments and allow you to take advantage of more unique trading opportunities as they arise.

24-Hour Trading

If you really want to trade where the action is, then look no further than futures trading in a global marketplace. Unlike stocks and ETFs with limited trading hours and often limited trading volume, the primary futures markets are often highly liquid and tradable nearly 24 hours. This provides market opportunity around the clock allowing you to react to overnight news and trade on your own schedule with futures traders around the world.

Tax Advantages

One of the most substantial benefits of trading futures vs. stocks is the tax advantages. All stock trading profits where the stock is held for less than 1 year are taxed at 100% short-term gains, whereas futures trading profits are usually taxed using a 60/40 rule. 60% of gains are taxed as long-term gains and 40% are taxed as short-term gains. This can be a considerable benefit for profitable traders. Be sure to consult your tax advisor for more information.

Why Over 1 Million Users Choose NinjaTrader

Award-Winning Futures Brokerage

High-performance platform. 100+ futures tools. Pro-level charts. Unlimited simulated trading.

Discount Futures Trading Pricing

No account minimum. Margins as low as $50 and commissions as low as $.09 per contract.

Trade How You Want, Where You Want

Our cloud-based infrastructure empowers you to trade futures across all your devices.

First-Class Support And Futures Education

Free 24-hour emergency trade desk. Daily webinars. 100s of on-demand training videos.

What Does It Cost To Get Started?

It's easy to get started with your futures trading account!

Futures trading generally has a lower initial account opening capital requirement than stock trading.
With stocks, there are day trading rules that require a trader to maintain minimum account balance of $25,000 which can be a high bar for new traders. Futures do not have a day trading capital requirement.
There is no funding minimum requirement to get started with NinjaTrader. You can open your account with as little as a few hundred dollars and start trading any of the available Micro futures contracts.