Margin, marked to market daily

The commodities track established that margin is not a cost. Futures keep that lesson and add the machinery no wrapper showed you: the daily mark, which makes futures P&L real money every single night.

The two margins

• Initial margin: the performance bond - posted to open, returned at close, sized by the clearing house to plausible daily moves. Still not a cost; still not the risk.
• Variation margin: the daily settlement flow - each day's loss leaves the account in cash tonight, each gain arrives the same way. Not a call to top up a buffer: an actual transfer, both directions, every day.

What daily settlement changes

Everything about how losses feel and function. A CFD's open loss is a screen number until closed; a futures loss is cash gone tonight - the same economic exposure, made liquid daily. Consequences: an account must hold cash headroom beyond initial margin, because ordinary adverse days drain real money before any 'call' arrives; a losing position cannot be quietly nursed, because it invoices nightly - the equity track's forever-hold is structurally impossible here; and the margin call, when it comes, is simply the machinery noticing the headroom is gone - lesson 2's strict guarantee, collecting.

The honest reframing

Daily settlement is the platform's most misunderstood feature and its most honest one. It converts drawdown from a feeling into a cash flow, forces the position's truth onto the account every night, and makes futures the one instrument whose losses cannot be deferred by not looking. Module 4 builds the headroom arithmetic; module 7 journals margin usage as its own line. The day-one version: a futures account's free cash is a risk number, it moves every night the market does, and knowing tonight's likely variation flow before holding through it is this asset class's version of checking the calendar.