I’ve started trading futures and currencies. It’s a small account, but I’m worried about the effect on my taxes because there is so much trading. Is there anything I can do about that?

If you are doing this on a whim, taxes might be the least of your worries.

Individuals who trade futures are likely to lose far more money than they make, especially if they use a lot of leverage – or borrowed money – for trades. Using leverage enhances gains but can make losses tremendous.

For individuals entering the futures market, losses tend to be so large that they are washed out of their accounts within five weeks, according to industry experts. From a tax standpoint, losses can be helpful as a deduction. From an investment perspective, losses can be crippling.

“People get hooked on futures because they are so fast,” co-founder of TD Ameritrade’s Think or Swim online brokerage Scott Sheridan said. “But we like futures as a hedge” rather than for ongoing trading.

For example, a hedge could be useful for a person with stocks that had run up significantly in a few months.

If the stocks were held less than a year and the person decided to sell, the taxes could be substantial because of short-term capital gains. But if the person was concerned about the stocks plunging while waiting for a smaller long-term capital gains tax, Sheridan said the investor might use futures to hedge the risk.

Options also can be used for hedging.

If you are serious about futures and worry about the tax consequences for a lot of trading, you could consider opening a Roth individual retirement account and trading within it or devoting part of an existing IRA to trading.

Most firms will not allow people to open a Roth specifically for futures trading because individuals can put only $5,000 a year into a Roth – or $6,000 if they are 50 or older. A person could open a Roth with $5,000 now and another $5,000 in January to increase the money to trade. But that’s not much for futures trading because brokers want you to have enough on hand to cover them if you lose a lot.

Sheridan, for example, who does allow futures trading within IRAs, said that if a person wanted to hold a British pound contract overnight, the contract would be $2,700, but the broker would require 125 percent of that, or $3,375, to cover losses.

Joe Duarte, author of “Trading Futures for Dummies,” suggests using exchange-traded funds rather than futures because ETF trading is less volatile and could spare you from costly margin calls that can wipe you out. ETFs also are easily traded within IRAs – regular or Roth.

Mark Wolfinger, author of “The Rookie’s Guide to Options: The Beginner’s Handbook of Trading Equity Options,” suggests it is wise to use a Roth IRA when doing a lot of trading, whether options, ETFs or stocks.

If you consider using IRAs for futures trading, remember that they are to provide retirement money, so don’t put anything at risk that you cannot afford to lose. Some financial advisers tell clients who want to trade to limit themselves to perhaps 5 percent of their money. In a Roth IRA, you can avoid all taxes on your gains provided you leave the money invested until you are at least 591/2 and have had the account at least five years.

Individuals can put $5,000 into a Roth this year if their modified adjusted income is $105,000 or less.

If they are married, the maximum income is $166,000, though they can put less than $5,000 into a Roth as a single person with an income up to $120,000 or $176,000 for a couple.

If you decide to use a taxable account to trade futures, special rules can keep taxes lower than if you were day-trading stocks. See www.law.cornell.edu. Click on U.S. Code, enter Title 26, Section 1256. Also see IRS Publication 550.

Some individual traders also can set up as a sole proprietor and use expenses such as trading education and a home office to offset possible taxes.

Gail MarksJarvis is a personal finance columnist for the Chicago Tribune and author of “Saving for Retirement Without Living Like a Pauper or Winning the Lottery.” Contact her at gmarksjarvis@tribune.com.