The instrument the desk trades, in money terms: what a contract is, what margin demands of an account, and what a backtest can prove and what it cannot.
- How a futures contract works, in money terms
A contract is a multiplier, a tick and a daily settlement. What one point of the S&P is worth in ES and MES, what margin actually is, why the account is settled every evening, and what the tax form looks like.
6 MIN · REVIEWED OCT 2026
- Margin — day, overnight, and why the number moves
Futures margin is a deposit the clearing house holds against your losses, sized to cover 99% of one day's price moves and changed whenever volatility changes. What the day rate and the overnight rate actually are, who sets each, what happens when you fall short, and why the figure on this page carries a date.
6 MIN · REVIEWED OCT 2026
- What a backtest can and cannot tell you
A backtest is a rejection machine, not a proof. The arithmetic of trying too many ideas, the four biases that flatter every result, and the rule the desk uses — a configuration counts only if its neighbours work too.
5 MIN · REVIEWED OCT 2026
- Why one hand on the rack and not ten
The desk once listed eight strategies and now deals one. Why ten hands on the same index are not ten bets, how a netted account turns two hands into one position, what the search for a flat-at-the-bell hand actually found (nothing, across more than fifty-five thousand configurations), and why the honest number of strategies to run is the number that has earned it — which, in October 2026, is one.
6 MIN · REVIEWED OCT 2026
- How to read a win rate
We tested 9,363 strategy configurations on real S&P futures data. Win rate explained 1.5% of whether they made money. Here is what to read instead.
REVIEWED AUG 2026
- What holding overnight really takes
Day margin is about $50 a contract. Overnight margin is about fifty times that, and a weekend gap goes straight through a stop. What that means for an account playing an overnight hand.
REVIEWED AUG 2026
Education, not advice. Nothing on this page recommends buying or selling anything, and nothing is a promise of results — every figure is hypothetical. TOTH does not provide investment advice. New to the vocabulary? The glossary has plain definitions.