Your paper account can practice stock index futures as well as options. Instead of buying a call or a put, a futures strategy goes long the index (betting it goes up) or short it (betting it goes down) — and unlike options, going short is a normal, everyday thing to do.

Everything else works the way you're already used to. The bot listens for alerts, opens the position, manages the exit, and fills in your Dashboard, History, and Calendar. It's all simulated money, exactly like the rest of Paper Trading.

Turning it on

Open the Strategies page while your broker is set to Paper, then create a strategy. At the very top of the Identity tab you'll see an Instrument picker:

• Options — the strategy you're used to. Buys calls and puts.
• Futures — trades the index contract itself, long or short.

Pick Futures and the rest of the form changes to match: a Futures group appears in the Signal Source dropdown, and the Risk & Orders tab swaps its percentage settings for the futures ones described below. A futures strategy carries an amber FUT tag on its card so you can tell the two apart at a glance.

You can also change an existing strategy's instrument from the same picker on its Identity tab — but only while the strategy is switched off and not holding a position. If either isn't true, the picker is greyed out and tells you which one is blocking you. That's deliberate: the two kinds read the same numbers completely differently, so flipping one mid-trade would re-interpret your exits underneath a live position.

Warning

Switching an options strategy to Futures does not convert its settings. A 1.05 take-profit meant "+5%" as an option; as a futures distance it means "1.05 points," which is roughly a tick away from your fill. Re-enter every exit number after you flip. If both your take-profit and your stop end up under 2, the save is rejected with a message saying so — that check exists purely to catch this mistake.

Both kinds run side by side

On paper you don't have to choose. Options strategies and futures strategies appear together in your list and can be enabled at the same time.

The limit is 5 enabled strategies in total, counted across both — 3 options plus 2 futures reaches it. That cap is about how much the simulator can carry, not about your subscription, so it doesn't change with your plan.

How an alert becomes a futures trade

A call alert becomes a long. A put alert becomes a short. The option's price is ignored completely — you're buying or selling the futures contract at the market.

The alert is on…	You trade (Micro)	You trade (Mini)
SPY or SPX	MES	ES
QQQ or NDX	MNQ	NQ
IWM or RUT	M2K	RTY

Multi-leg spread alerts can't be expressed as a futures position, so a futures strategy simply skips them.

Reversal Policy decides what an opposite-direction signal does to a position you're already holding:

• Close Only — flatten and stay flat.
• Close & Reverse — flatten, then enter the new side.
• Ignore — keep what you have and drop the signal.

Size: micro vs mini

Futures don't cost premium, so there's no capital-based sizing. You set Contracts Per Trade (1–10) and that's what every entry gets.

Contract Scale decides how big each of those contracts is:

Contract	One point is worth
MES (Micro S&P)	$5
ES (E-mini S&P)	$50
MNQ (Micro Nasdaq)	$2
NQ (E-mini Nasdaq)	$20
M2K (Micro Russell)	$5
RTY (E-mini Russell)	$50

Warning

A mini is ten times the size of its micro. The same 6-point stop that risks $30 on MES risks $300 on ES. Start on Micro, even on paper — practising at a size you'd never really trade teaches you the wrong lesson.

Exits are distances, not percentages

This is the one thing to internalize. An options exit is a multiplier of what you paid. A futures exit is a distance from where you filled.

Set Exit Unit to whichever unit you actually think in, and every distance field on the strategy follows it:

Unit	40 means	Best when
Points (the default)	40 index points	You think in index levels
Ticks	40 ticks — 10 points on MES, where a tick is 0.25	You think in the contract's smallest increment
Dollars	$40 per contract — 8 points on MES at $5 a point	You want the same risk across different contracts

Dollars is the one that behaves differently from contract to contract, and that's the point of it: $500 is 100 points on MES but only 10 points on RTY — the same money at risk either way.

Note

Changing the unit does not rewrite the numbers you already typed. Enter 40 in points, switch to ticks, and you now have 40 ticks — a quarter of the distance you meant. The form warns you when you switch; re-enter the values.

Then set:

• Take Profit and Stop Loss — the distance from your fill to each. Set either to 0 to turn that side off (turning the stop off is not recommended).
• Trail Trigger — how far in your favour price has to move before a Trailing Stop arms. 0 means no trailing.
• Trail Offset — how far behind the best price the stop then follows.
• Break-Even Trigger — optional. Pulls the stop up to your entry once you're this far ahead. Leave it empty to skip it.
• Multi-Tier Trailing — optional. Tightens the offset as profit grows, up to 5 tiers.

For a short, all of this is simply mirrored: your target sits below your fill, your stop above it, and "in your favour" means down. You don't enter anything differently — the direction is applied for you.

A worked example

You create a paper strategy, pick Futures, and set:

• Contracts Per Trade: 1, Contract Scale: Micro
• Exit Unit: Points
• Take Profit: 10 pts, Stop Loss: 6 pts
• Trail Trigger: 5 pts, Trail Offset: 3 pts

A call alert on SPY arrives and fills you long 1 MES at 5,900. Your target goes to 5,910 and your stop to 5,894 — a $50 win or a $30 loss at $5 a point. Price runs to 5,905, which is 5 points of profit, so the trail arms and starts following 3 points behind the high. A push to 5,908 drags the stop up to 5,905, and from that moment the trade can't finish red no matter what happens next.

Had the alert been a put, everything would be the same upside down: short at 5,900, target 5,890, stop 5,906.

Margin, and what happens at 4:00 PM ET

Futures don't cost you premium — they set money aside as margin. Opening a position moves no cash at all; cash moves when it closes, by whatever you made or lost.

Two different margin rates apply, and the simulator models both:

• Day margin — the intraday rate, roughly $50 for one MES. It applies from the 6:00 PM ET Sunday–Thursday session open through 4:00 PM ET the next weekday.
• Overnight margin — the exchange's rate, roughly $2,509 for one MES. It applies from 4:00 PM ET, through the 4:00–6:00 PM settlement gap, and all weekend from Friday afternoon.

At 4:00 PM ET every open futures position is re-reserved at the overnight rate. If your account can't cover the new total, positions are closed automatically — biggest requirement first — until it can, and you get an alert for each one. What counts as "cover" is your cash plus the profit or loss riding on your open positions, so a winning position helps pay for itself.

Two things worth planning around:

1. Holding overnight needs roughly 50× the margin of a day trade. A balance that comfortably day-trades five MES may not be able to hold a single one overnight.
2. Between 4:00 and 6:00 PM ET, new entries are quoted at the overnight rate too. A small account can be refused an entry in that window that it would have been given at 10:00 AM.

At the 6:00 PM ET reopen everything goes back to the day rate on its own.

Tip

Index futures trade nearly around the clock on weeknights, so a futures strategy can take signals long after the stock market has closed. If you only want it working during part of the day, set Trading Hours on the strategy.

What futures strategies don't do yet

Some options features simply don't have a futures equivalent, and their settings are hidden rather than shown-and-ignored:

• No averaging or scaling in. A repeat signal in the same direction on a contract you already hold is dropped. One position per contract.
• No Profit Lock, no Side Swapping, no Reverse, and no exit legs — a futures position takes one target and one stop.
• No adjusting the target or stop from the portal once you're in. Set them on the strategy beforehand.
• No manual or webhook entry. Futures strategies trade from their signal source only.
• Not covered by the backtester, which replays option prices. Practising on paper is the rehearsal for futures.

Your Killswitch, Trade Limits, Skip Days, and Trading Hours all work on a futures strategy exactly as they do on an options one.