This is a different style of trading than what investors do. He said that he was...

		beagle3 on Nov 6, 2012 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: How I made $500k with machine learning and high fr... This is a different style of trading than what investors do. He said that he was never more than a few contracts in. A single contract needs $10K day trading margin usually (depends on time frame and specific contract, but it's a reasonable estimate). Therefore, if he was never more than 10 contracts long or short at the same time, the risk was of $100K. Making $500K on $100K over 6 months is good business.

You are correct. I think I had to have $10-30k in my account. I was extremely low risk so they weren't concerned.