Track B Exam — Futures Day Trading

This is the Track B exam for Alpha Academy Level 3. It covers the five Futures Day Trading modules: The Futures Setup The Futures Day Trader's Setup, Futures: Trading the Open Trading the Open, Trend Days vs Range Days Trend vs Range, Futures Risk & the Daily Stop Futures Risk & the Daily Stop, and The Futures Routine The Futures Day Trader's Routine.

How it works:

Closed book. Put the modules away. This checks what is actually in your head.
30 questions, each with four choices (A, B, C, D) and exactly one correct answer.
You need 24 out of 30 (80%) to pass.
Retakes are allowed. If you miss the mark, re-read the modules your wrong answers point to, then take it again.
There are no answers in this document. The answer key is a separate file, so this exam stays honest.

Part 1 — The Setup (The Futures Setup)

Day margin (intraday margin) on a futures contract is set by:
- A) The exchange
- B) Your broker
- C) The federal government
- D) A single industry standard that is identical everywhere
Overnight margin (initial margin) is set by:
- A) Your broker
- B) Your trading platform
- C) The exchange
- D) The SEC
ES is trading at 6,000. One ES contract (worth $50 per point) controls how much notional index exposure?
- A) $30,000
- B) $60,000
- C) $300,000
- D) $3,000,000
You are long 1 ES contract with the index at 6,000, and the index falls 1%. Your loss is:
- A) $3,000
- B) $300
- C) $600
- D) $6,000
The minimum tick on ES and MES is 0.25 points. One tick is worth:
- A) $50 on ES and $5 on MES
- B) $5 on ES and $12.50 on MES
- C) $2.50 on ES and $0.25 on MES
- D) $12.50 on ES and $1.25 on MES
Futures margin is best described as:
- A) A loan from your broker that charges interest
- B) A good-faith deposit you post as security while controlling a contract worth far more than the deposit
- C) The full purchase price of the contract
- D) Insurance that refunds your trading losses

Part 2 — Trading the Open (Futures: Trading the Open)

Overnight inventory means:
- A) What happened during the Globex session while the stock market was closed — who was buying and selling, and where price traveled
- B) The contracts your broker keeps in storage for you
- C) The positions you personally carried overnight
- D) The number of shares a company has outstanding
Which levels does Futures: Trading the Open have you mark before the open to frame the day?
- A) Yesterday's opening price, the 200-day average, and the day's pivot
- B) VWAP, the round number, and last week's high
- C) The overnight high, the overnight low, and yesterday's close
- D) The bid, the ask, and the last trade
The opening range is:
- A) The high and low of the first part of the session (often the first 15, 30, or 60 minutes) — a map for the day, not a prediction
- B) A guaranteed boundary that price will not cross that day
- C) The distance between the bid and the ask at 9:30 AM
- D) The overnight high minus yesterday's close
ES gaps up, pushes above the overnight high in the first minutes, then stalls and falls back inside the overnight range. This open is behaving most like:
- A) A drive open
- B) A balanced open
- C) A liquidation
- D) A test-and-reverse open
On a drive open, price:
- A) Opens, tests an overnight extreme, and reverses
- B) Opens strongly in one direction and keeps going, with pullbacks shallow or absent
- C) Chops sideways in a narrow band all morning
- D) Always gaps more than 50 points
The first-hour playbook in Futures: Trading the Open advises you to:
- A) Trade your largest size immediately at 9:30 AM, before any range can form
- B) Never trade at all before noon
- C) Use smaller size while the opening range forms, refuse to chase the first spike, and stay alert for scheduled 10:00 AM reports
- D) Ignore the economic calendar until lunch

Part 3 — Trend vs Range and VWAP (Trend Days vs Range Days)

VWAP is:
- A) The average of the day's high and the day's low
- B) The average price of the day so far, weighted by volume — prices where more contracts traded count more heavily
- C) Yesterday's closing price adjusted for volume
- D) A moving average of the last 20 trading days
Why do large institutions watch VWAP so closely?
- A) It predicts tomorrow's opening price
- B) The exchange requires every trade to happen at VWAP
- C) It is the level the exchange uses to set margin
- D) Funds working large orders are often measured on whether they paid better or worse than VWAP, so the biggest participants treat it as the day's fair-value line
By noon, price has crossed VWAP nine times and keeps coming back to it. That is evidence of:
- A) A balanced, range-type day — no one-sided flow is holding price on one side of VWAP
- B) A strong trend day
- C) An approaching margin call
- D) A drive open
The evidence says trend day, up. The trend-day playbook says to:
- A) Short every rally, because the move has gone too far
- B) Take full profit at the first small target, every time
- C) Buy pullbacks toward VWAP or the opening-range edge, and trail your stop so the day can pay you
- D) Double your size at the highs
The evidence says range day. The range-day playbook says to:
- A) Chase every breakout of the band with full size
- B) Fade the extremes toward the middle, take smaller targets and actually take them, and quit the moment price breaks the band and holds outside it
- C) Hold every fade until it crosses the entire market
- D) Ignore VWAP completely
The "two expensive mistakes" of Trend Days vs Range Days are:
- A) Fading a trend day, and breakout-chasing a range day
- B) Using a stop loss, and keeping a journal
- C) Trading micro contracts, and trading the open
- D) Checking the calendar, and marking your levels

Part 4 — Risk and the Daily Stop (Futures Risk & the Daily Stop)

You buy 2 ES contracts at 6,020 with a stop at 6,008. Your total dollar risk is:
- A) $600
- B) $240
- C) $12,000
- D) $1,200
Your account is $2,500. You risk a 10-point stop on 1 MES contract. The dollar risk — and its share of your account — is:
- A) $500 — 20% of the account
- B) $50 — 2% of the account
- C) $5 — 0.2% of the account
- D) $250 — 10% of the account
A trader with a $5,000 account risks 1% per trade — $50. Trading MES at $5 per point, how wide a stop can that $50 buy?
- A) 1 point
- B) 5 points
- C) 10 points
- D) 50 points
A daily stop is:
- A) The maximum number of dollars you are allowed to lose in one day, set before the session — when you hit it, the platform closes and you are done
- B) A point target you hope to respect if the day feels wrong
- C) A limit your broker automatically enforces for every trader in all cases
- D) The same thing as a per-trade stop, only larger
Which statement about liquidation is correct?
- A) The broker must warn you three times over three days before acting
- B) Liquidation can only happen at the end of the month
- C) If your balance falls below the margin required to hold the position, the broker can close your position at whatever price is available — you do not get a vote
- D) The exchange refunds any loss beyond your margin deposit
You opened a day trade using day margin and drift into the close without exiting. What happens?
- A) Nothing — day margin quietly continues all night
- B) The position must now meet the much larger overnight (exchange) margin; if your account cannot support it, the broker liquidates at or before the close
- C) The position automatically converts into shares of an index fund
- D) Your stop price is guaranteed to be honored at tomorrow's open
The one-contract rule and the scaling doctrine of Futures Risk & the Daily Stop say:
- A) Start with as many contracts as your margin allows — size is free
- B) Double your size after every losing day so you recover faster
- C) Decide your size mid-trade, by feel
- D) Trade one contract until you have a consistent track record; size is earned — added only after proof, from profits

Part 5 — The Routine (The Futures Routine)

Which of these is NOT one of the five pre-session steps in The Futures Routine?
- A) Review the Globex session
- B) Check the economic calendar
- C) Write the daily stop before you trade
- D) Place your first trade before the bell, so you are already in position
The first-hour patience rule means:
- A) Let the opening range form before committing full size — stay patient while the day shows its hand
- B) Trade the very first candle of the day with maximum size
- C) Skip marking the overnight range to save time
- D) Decide trend or range at 9:31 AM and never revisit the question
The midday reassessment asks one question:
- A) "How do I get back to even before the close?"
- B) "Should I double my size for the afternoon?"
- C) "Is today a trend day or a range day — and does the playbook I am using match?"
- D) "What is tomorrow's forecast?"
The end-of-day review exists to:
- A) Predict tomorrow's direction
- B) Record the day honestly — the trades, whether you called the day type right, and whether you followed your rules — while it is still fresh
- C) Set tomorrow's profit target
- D) Replace the weekly review
The Friday weekly review focuses on:
- A) Patterns across the week — results by day type, your biggest leak, and one fix to carry into next week
- B) Your total profit, and nothing else
- C) Choosing next month's broker
- D) Deleting losing trades from the journal so the record looks clean