In your quest to learn all essential ingredients to round out your competency in trading, you will need to apply a multiplicity of tools and reference materials on a daily basis.  This is no short list of items within your agenda. Home work is essential.  During your first month, expect to attend 4 to 6 hours of formal instruction and reinstruction. Your homework during the first month will consist of reviewing the material provided after your have observed the market for at least 2 hours per day. 

View brief margin & reference:  COSMIC, commodities, options, stock index, metals, interest, currency:

Margin¹      Brief Specs²

Note on Brief link: 

Above data under construction.

There are two principle reasons we chose NinjaTrader for our trading platform: 

     1.  Its Continuous Simulator enabling you to trade any time of day.

     2.  Its Market data recording and Market Replay feature enabling you to trade yesterday or last week's market.

          This practice method, available exclusively on NinjaTrader is the BEST use of your time as a student of the 

          financial markets. One or two hours a day trading yesterday's market FAMILIARIZES you with its ebb & flow.

After all is said and done, practice is the glue that binds your gradually improving skill into perfection.  Without practice, no skill may be achieved.  Trading is not gambling.  Casino gambling games are made to be simple and not complex, easy to learn and repetitious in style with minimum moving parts. Trading is much more complex and requires a far greater regimen of repetitious practice.  So, unless you really want to work, you should throw in the towel right now and save yourself a lot of time, money, and aggravation!  This is boot camp style development.

There are myriad sources for futures specifications, and every trader needs to become familiar with the specs; however, diving into the various Exchange websites is an ordeal for the unfamiliar; therefore, we have created a brief "cheat sheet" to help traders along their learning curve.  There are 3 types of margin:  intraday, initial [overnight] and maintenance [overnight].  Initial and maintenance are rather similar whereas initial is about 10% higher than maintenance for the first day of the overnight hold.  Intraday margin is much less than overnight; this provides day traders a tremendous advantage.

¹⁾ Margin Extract, complements of Mirus Futures where I have traded since 2004:

²⁾ Tech Specifications Extract, complements of Richard V Rueb

And, if you really want to know how other traders think, read the "Art of War," by Sun Tzu.