For a day trader who possesses and follows a trading system that wins consistently and has the right attitude towards trading, futures trading or even online forex currency trading  instead of day trading stocks on the NYSE can be an extremely wise decision and potentially much more lucrative too. The main attraction that draws people to trading forex or futures is the potential to make quite a large amount of profit in a short amount of time. The other attraction to the forex or futures markets and why they can be so profitable is the use of leverage offered in these markets.Say for example if a trader had $5000 in a futures trading account then the trader could trade one E-Mini S&P 500 stock futures index contract in this account quite comfortably without taking on too much risk. By the same token to buy say even just $1000 of each of the 500 stocks represented in the S&P 500 market a trader will need to have at least $500,000 in his or her account to be able to do so. So assuming a trader thinks that the market is going up he or she would buy one E-Mini S&P 500 futures contract rather than buy all of the 500 stocks that make up the index. So if the trader made $5000 by buying all the 500 stocks in the index then that made a 1% gain on his or her account, whereas if the trader made the same $5000 with one contract on a $5000 futures trading account he actually made a 100% return in the same amount of time taking a smaller risk to achieve that return.Now this logic can also work against a trader in a similar fashion. A trader can lose only 1% or even a 100% of their account taking the same trade outlined above. That is why it is so crucial for a trader to always use stops while trading the forex or futures markets and get out of a position as soon as a trader senses that the position is going against them by using logical places to get stopped out of a position. It can also become very costly to make all of the 500 trades on each individual stock in the index even if it as low as $8 per trade. Trading a single futures contract does not prove to be too expensive as the commission for doing that can be as low as $5 for a round turn.Even though it is possible for a trader to make quite a bit of money trading the futures markets, it is not always possible for him to be right on each and every trade taken either. It is impossible be consistently profitable and right all of the time. Another advantage of trading the futures or forex markets is that you can use your unrealized profits in the trading account to get more leverage to add on to your positions. In a stock trading account you need to have the cash in your account to be able to open another position and cannot use your open profits on existing positions to do so.In the stock trading universe the trader has to choose from 10,000+ listed individual stocks on the exchange whereas in the forex or futures markets he only has to choose from thirty or so of the very liquid contracts on the CME in different segments of the economy that he might have an interest to trade. He can also trade just one or two contracts if he does not want to diversify. It is very easy to go short trading forex or futures contracts as there is no uptick rule requirement as in stocks. There is always a profitable opportunity available out there in the market to those that trade commodities in a up, down or sideways market. And last but not the least advantage of trading futures or forex is their taxable status. Futures and forex are taxed at sixty percent long term and forty percent short term capital gains. Ordinary capital gains on stocks are taxed at the regular income level and might be as high as around thirty five to fifty percent for some individuals.Because of all the reasons outlined above, it is a very simple choice that a trader has to make when choosing between online forex currency trading or trading the stock market.

Tags: currency, day trading stocks, Forex, futures index, Intraday, NYSE, Online, Over, Preferred, stocks, Trader, Trading