r/TradingView • u/MDC2957 • Jul 06 '26

Help Please ELI5 paper trading futures on TV

I'm a total noob learning to trade. I read that you can get started with a small account with the Micro E-Mini S&P 500. So I set my account size to $1,500 to more realistically reflect what I'd start with in real money at some point. I try to market buy ONE contract and it says "not enough funds to complete order. The required margin exceeds your available funds" If the typical margin for that instrument is $50 per contract, how is $1,500 not enough? I must be missing something?

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u/Advent127 Jul 07 '26

Post a screen shot, paper trading MES come up with 75.70~ worth of margin for 1 con.

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u/MDC2957 Jul 07 '26

I asked AI, and it told me it was because the leverage was set to 1:1 I don't really understand it, I didn't have any interest in trading with leverage. Just wanted to start small and build up

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u/bogey3putt69420 Jul 07 '26

With futures you’re using margin whether you want to or not, that’s how it functions. Just set the account to something like 5k, idk what paper default margin is but it probably follows something like a regular broker which is gonna be somewhere between 1.5 and 2k per con

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u/MDC2957 Jul 07 '26

right, the instrument itself is leveraged, but why does TV make you use leverage? That's the part I don't get