Future Exchange Margin Requirements

I just found out that each exchange has their own minimum margin requirements, and you can look up each one at the different exchange.

Before I thought they were set by the broker, but it looks like the exchange sets the margin then your broker can add to it if they want to, also if a commodity starts moving around much, then the margin can go up dramatically, so these are just the margin requirements for today.

These are the exchange margin requirements:

www.nymex.com/ewd_margins.aspx - NYMEX Division Margin Requirements gas, oil

www.nybot.com/marketInfo/marginRequirements/outright.asp - sugar, cocoa, coffee, cotton, ethanol, FCOJ, Indices (In U.S. Dollars), and Currencies, Cross-Rates

www.cbot.com/cbot/pub/page/0,3181,2142,00.html#1a - corn, oats, rough rice, soybeans, soybean mean, soybean oil, whear, ethanol,

mini soybean initial margin $486

corn $1350

oats $1013

soybeans $2430

soybean mean $1823

soybean oil $810