How to Day Trade Futures with only $33

So when I made the transition to futures, I had a ton of questions on how can I do that with a small amount of money? Because the first thing many people go see or have heard with futures, and this is one of the reasons that I did not jump in for a very long time is margin requirements are very high on some platforms. So today we're going to talk about how you can day trade futures on a budget. And so we're going to go over how can I start with as little as $33? Yes, you can start with $33 or less in some cases. How much are you actually risking? So let's say that you do fund an account with this $33 method, which you guys can obviously see as prop firms. We will talk about that a little bit later, but how much are you actually risking? Are you just risking the 33 or is there more risk associated? That's a common question I have gotten and I'll cover that. Um, and then at the end we will go over my favorite broker and tips to pass if you do go the funded prop firm account route. So we'll cover all that today. As usual, we will jump right in. I do want to warn you guys the commenters down below are scammers, scam bots, and also I have one Instagram. It is always tagged in the description box and that's how you can see which one is the real me. The rest are scammers and spammers. Please do not fall for that. And with that being said, let's dive right in. So I've talked about this in my futures training video and if you have not seen that, I highly recommend going to watch that. I just explained what futures are and give you a basic beginner's guide to get started. But let's just do a quick overview of the pros and cons of futures itself and then we'll dive into how you can trade them on a budget. So the cool thing about futures is there's no PDT rule, meaning you do not need $25,000 to day trade. Now that little way around options trading with a cash account. Yes, you could get started with a small amount of money, but you were still pretty limited. The cool thing about futures is you can get started with $33 and have immediate access to being able to day trade as much as you want. But I do want to highlight there are commissions involved. So there are higher commissions on futures trading versus your normal, maybe what you're used to, which is like your $0 Robinhood broker or Webull. So just be aware that there are commissions involved when it comes to futures trading. So don't go too crazy. And we've already started this off by helping you understand that it is small account friendly if you go the prop firm route. But we'll also talk about if you decide not to go the prop firm route, you can also fund your own account, which I will go over why that might be necessary regardless if you do prop firms or not. Less variables to trade. So you don't have anything like Greeks. When it comes to options, trading Greeks can be a little bit more complicated and a learning curve for a lot of people. You can trade at pre-market and after hours, 24, six. So there is an hour gap and then obviously the weekends, but you can have a lot more flexibility when it comes to trading. And there's very high liquidity and volume when it comes to futures trading. So you never have to worry about getting a fill. As long as you're trading the right contracts with high volume, there are two big cons when it comes to futures trading. And these are high margin requirements on some broker platforms, and it can be very dangerous for new traders. So I want to highlight the cons right here because a lot of people have it stuck in their head that futures are very dangerous and they can be. So I'm not one that's going to tell you they're easy as cake. There's no risk. There's always risk associated, especially with trading and day trading and the stock market in general. But futures can be very, very volatile and very leveraged. So that's actually one of the reasons that I am a fan of prop firms. And we'll go over more in detail how it does limit your risk, which is something absolutely crucial when it comes to day trading and basically how it can be dangerous for beginner traders is because if you're not going to a prop firm route, you're going maybe your own funded account. You will learn very quickly how fast these things move. You do not need to trade more than one contract. You probably should be trading micros. You definitely should be trading micros. Let's just go ahead and say that. And again, if you don't know what I'm talking about, go watch my futures training video after this, but we're going to cover why these two cons actually can be avoided using prop firms and how you don't need a ton of money, aka high margin requirements. So for example, I'm honestly not sure why this is coming in blurry, but you guys are just going to have to read between the blur with me. It also might have something to do with the new house that I bought is in the middle of nowhere, which I love, but wifi is still a problem right now. What I'm just trying to show you guys is if you go to something like think or swim, which has been my day one charting platform, and you look at the margin requirements for futures, you're going to get very nervous if you have a small account or you're used to trading with like a thousand dollars, which is pretty typical. So you can see margin maintenance can be, you know, anywhere from 12,000, 18,000, 8,000, and that's just for one contract. And this top one is ES and this second one is NQ. Um, so if you're used to trading something like spy, that would be ES and the Q's NQ. Now there are micro versions, which are MES and MNQ, which is just a smaller fraction of this, which would cost less money, but it's still very, very high when it comes to if you are used to trading with a small account. So that brings me into the benefits of prop firms. Now, before we dive into prop firms, I want to make something very, very clear. As I'm making this video, I am not sponsored by any of them. I have been approached to be sponsored by several of them and I have declined every single one just because I'm not a big fan of something that's still very new, even though they've been out for, you know, a few years, I just, I can't put my name behind anything that might have uncertainty, especially with things like more regulations coming. And that I think it was like FTMO. I don't know. There was one, um, funded Forex thing that went down. I'm sure you guys will let me know what it was in the comments. I don't trade Forex, but I just saw it circulating on Twitter. I also don't get on Twitter anymore. That was just a fluke thing. Um, but my point being is there's always uncertainty. And so I'm going to go with the brokers that have been around the longest. And that is why I've stuck with thinkorswim for so long. And there's other ones like obviously trade station, interactive brokers. I mean, even Robinhood and Weeble, those are pretty well known and E-Trade and things like those. But when it comes to funded, you know, funded platforms that are what we're about to talk about. My main point here is I want you to think of them at the end of the day, like advanced paper trading, because in my mind, that's what it is. It's a way for you to basically use monopoly money, fake money, or very, very little amounts of money to get the education, which actually I like this version of education because it's advanced paper trading. You have money in the game, which is around what $30. And I'll show you what $33 can get you right now. So the key thing about trading is preserving your capital. If you blow your thousand dollar account right off the bat, and that's all the money you had to trade, you're out of the game. And so in the beginning, especially the first year of you trying to learn how to trade, you need to be very, very keen on just paper trading or starting with small amounts of money. And so prop firms allow you to do that. But the thing also about paper trading is it doesn't involve the emotional aspect of it, which is something that I agree. I never liked about paper trading. I could paper trade all day long. I didn't have any emotions attached to the money. And then you go and try to trade real money. And it was a completely different story with prop firms. You at least have some money in the game, so it gets your attention, but it's not enough to break you. So what I would like to see you guys take out of this is use prop firms to get that education, to get that practice. And heck, some people stick with prop firms and use them, you know, instead of using your own money and that works for them, but others do it to fund their own accounts and get that practice and get that repetition without risking thousands and thousands of dollars of their own money. And I'm a big fan of utilizing your capital in smart ways. So if I can have cash to go do things like invest in real estate or businesses, which is something I love to do, or even do things like have my capital available to trade something like penny stocks, I do that quite often. And that does take a lot of my capital. The way that I trade them is heavy in size or just stocks in general. I'd rather do that than have my capital tied up day trading. To summarize what I'm trying to say is use prop firms as a way to gain experience without risking a lot. But in the end, I would consider using it to fund your own account. I think that's a great way to build your confidence, build your skill level without risking a lot. But if you decide prop firms are the way for you and you love it and their rules don't bother you, then just keep using their money to trade. Why not use somebody else's money to make money? I think that's very smart. But at the end of the day, it's always up to you. Okay. Now diving into the good stuff, which is basically the prop firm that I went with is Apex Trader Funding. Now I do want to highlight again, talking about some recent things that have been going on with regulations. So their payment processor was Deal, D E E L. They stopped using them or Deal stopped using Apex Trader Funding. So they had to find new ways to get payment processing. And that was just a recent ordeal ever since that big Forex fund went down, there's been more regulation. So one thing that I do want to highlight is the importance of understanding don't put all your eggs in one basket. So let's say that you really like Apex Trader Funding and you go with them. And this is just the one that I started with. I would consider looking at others that are highly rated and we'll go over one more that is really common that members use in my group. But I just want to highlight the fact, don't put all your eggs in one basket because if something happens and they go down, you don't want to be only familiar with this platform. And then you're just out of luck. And next thing you know, you're having to start all over. So be prepared for that. You never know what's going to happen. This is all pretty new territory to the trading world, even though they've been out for a few years. So they do have an 80% off sale going on. Like I said, I'm not going to tag any affiliate link, nothing like that. You can go look up the coupon. I believe it's like save 80, 80% off. And then let's talk about the $33 option. So a lot of people, my group go for the 50K full accounts. So what this means, if you pay, cause it's 80% off 167, I think it comes out to like $33 and 40 cents. You can gain access to this account. Now it's like, uh, sports tryouts. So you have to prove yourself. So they'll take you through an evaluation process. I explain all of this in my previous features training video, but you basically have to try out to see if they will fund you or not. You basically have to try out for this funded account. If you pass, they'll give you 50K of capital to trade with. There are rules involved. There's a trailing threshold. You can't just go and get lucky one day and you know, beat your profit goal and then get the money. Um, just make sure you understand all the rules associated. But the whole point of this video is showing you, you can take $33 and 40 cents, which is lunch nowadays for like two people. Um, and you can go and try to get access to 50K. And so you have to prove yourself, which I like. Um, one thing I don't like is when brand new traders just jump in and start trying to fund these accounts one after the other. And they rack up losses very quickly just because they're in gambling mode and they're not prepared to do what it takes to pass one of these, which we'll talk about towards the end, really what strategy you need in order to have success with passing a funded account. But there's other options too. You can go smaller than that. You can go for a 25K account. You can go all the way up to 300K accounts. You can also trade multiple. You can trade up to 20 with a trade copier. This is something I cover extensively in my futures program, um, which is week five in my eight week program, which covers all of my strategies, day trading, uh, swing trading, penny stocks, still have day trading options in there, which I don't do anymore. Um, but it also covers my entire futures journey, how I got started, how I set up my platform with Apex and my broker, which is Ninja, which we will hop into right now. So Ninja has margin requirements just like thinkorswim or any other broker, but this is a futures broker Ninja trader. So they have a little bit more flexibility. As you can see, um, you can do 50 day intraday margins or $500. So if you were to do a self-funded account with Ninja, you don't need a ton of money. You don't need 10,000, $15,000 to trade futures. You can do it with as little as 50 or 500. Now, if you lose some money, you get a margin call. Obviously you don't want to have just $500 in there. Um, you're going to need a cushion, but it is still very doable for that person who's used to trading a small thousand dollar account. And as you can see here, we can just type in really quick to see what the margin requirements for ES are. Oh, I'm so used to typing in the slash. Let's try this. There we go. So you can see 500 day, um, but the initial, so if you're swing trading is that higher amount. So this is just for day trading, um, which is what most people do when you are trading futures. Swing trading is a completely different beast, but very possible once you find your strategy. Okay, let's go over one more option that a lot of people use and that's top step. So top step honestly has been around longer than apex trading. Um, they have been in business for 10 years. Uh, they are very well known. And so these are the two common ones. I will probably open a top step account just to get a feel for them, but I really do like apex because they give you the option to trade up to 20 accounts, which I really, really like for the psychology aspect where they only let you trade three, I believe they have less strict rules though than apex. So it just is your preference, but let's go over, um, earn funding, how much they cost. So they're not as cheap as apex. You can see it's $49 for a 50 K account where apex was on sale for like $33. But like I said, they're not as strict when it comes to the rules that you need to pass in order to earn funding. So this is another one you might want to look at. So we have talked about a ton, you know, basically covering the prop firm option for $33 of trading pros versus cons on prop firms. Now remember pros, basically you get to use somebody else's money cons. There are rules associated. There is some regulation issues. So just be careful of getting too confident with one broker. And then when it comes to how much money are you actually risking, we'll cover that really quick. And then we'll jump into more on tips to pass if you do decide to go the funded route. So how much are you actually risking? Is it just $33? Or is it more than that? Are there some like little details hidden in fine print? So the cool thing is let's say you go this route and you buy an account for $33, right? That is all you're risking. So you're not risking anything else. Let's say that you pass the funded account. You go into a PA account or you pass the eval account and you go into a funded account. Let's say that you're up a certain amount, but you hit the trailing threshold. Do you owe them money? No. At the end of the day, the only thing you are risking is the money that you pay for the evaluation account. And then obviously there are extra fees associated that if you get a funded account, you'll have to pay. So that's something else. But any fees that you pay them is what you're risking. So I really, really, really like that about prop firms because it forces you to be disciplined. They cut you off once you hit a certain amount of losses. But again, at the end of the day, you're not risking more than just whatever you have paid them to try to get a funded account. And so that really does limit your risk because there is a ton of risk associated with futures. They're very liquid, very volatile, and they require a ton of margin, a ton of capital. And if you are trading your own funded account, that can get tricky if you get in a margin call. Oftentimes, I will say your broker will margin call you before something super crazy happens, but you never know things happen. You know, systems freeze up and stuff like that. So prop firms are really cool in the fact that they do limit the amount that you're risking. And they help you become a more disciplined trader because there are so many rules involved. And so if someone else is holding the reins on the rules and the activation of your account, again, that is super, super beneficial for the beginning trader, somebody who's new, somebody who's still going to have those gambling tendencies, not set a stop loss, all those things. So another benefit and pro of which outweighs the cons on prop firms. And last time I say this, because I know a lot of people are going to ask if you want more details on all of this, please go watch that futures video. I spent a lot of time breaking this down and then I also have a full program on this step-by-step how I set it up in my membership. If you want, you know, more from me, more education, that's where you can find that. So to wrap this up, let's talk about some tips so you can hopefully pass your prop firm eval account if you go that route. And so we're going to actually use a trade that we took this morning in premarket. So I am typically always trading in premarket before market even opens. And I really love to trade oil and ES. So this trade was on oil and we're going to walk through how this is going to help you in just a minute, but you have to understand when it comes to trading your evaluation accounts, you've got to be in that day trading and scalping mode, quick in and out trades, not holding onto something and letting a winner turn into a loser that will kill your accounts very quickly trailing threshold. And it's something you have to understand. Again, I cover that in my futures video. So let's talk about this trade right here. Basically I was just looking for a bear trap and I was looking to go long to the 90 89 level, which was a larger trend line. And so if we reclaimed that 90 50 level, I was looking to go long and we did. So let's go and look and see what happens. You can see that was a right here. So this is where we temporarily dipped below a support level, which ended up being a bear trap. Just a few things we were looking for and we broke back above and then ended up hitting fib, which was not only our first target, which was near 90 89, that was the second target. And so made for a great long trade. Now, the reason I wanted to show you guys this is because if you are in an eval account and you did not take profits because you were being greedy, this would cause your account to go negative even though you didn't lose money. So let's say your entry was here on a long trade. It went up. That means your entire profit went up, your entire account value went up. And if you did not take profits and you were looking for a larger swing trade and you let it come back down, this is going to hurt you via trailing threshold. So that's really, really key and important for you to understand. If you are doing prop firms, you've got to be in that day trade scalpers mindset and take those profits when you get them. If you don't, it's really, really going to mess up your progress. So this was a fantastic trade. Great way to end the week. It's Friday today. I took this was a one and done and yeah, it was not that complicated. It was literally just using basic support and resistance. It was also using understanding of price action and liquidity grabs, which this again was a liquidity grab, a bear trap and that propelled it upwards to my fib elevator strategy, which was where I got 9109. Again, these are all things that I teach more heavily in my eight week program because I try my best to post as much free content for you guys on here as possible. But if you want more from me, you can find that inside of the peachy investor membership and all details on that are linked in the description box down below. Again, reminder, I have one Instagram handle. It's also linked below and I will never direct message you. Those are all scammers, all scam bots. Please block and report them. And that's a wrap for today. I appreciate you guys so much for staying tuned and watching this entire video. If you're still here, if you guys have any questions on futures, drop them down below and I'll try to answer some commonly asked questions on my Instagram stories on Q and A's and that's a wrap. Thank you guys for watching and I'll see you next time.