Hello fellas, my name is Dave and Im located in Montreal Canada. In the past few months I've been looking for the best broker available to me ( im under canadian legislation regarding online trading) and so far I've been quite disapointed to see How complex it is to open an account to trade the /futures. I first try AvaFx, funded an account with em, but then got some issues and closed my account. I then tried a couple others, but was not to please with them. Then I opened a paper account with ThinkorSwim... Finally a platform that allowed me to trade the way I like: Active trader. Plus its a Toronto Dominion product(canadian) So Im giving them a call to fund my account with a 10k deposit. Then I got hit with it.... ThinkorSwim only allows Canadian resident to trade stock... What a bummer! So I gotta look .... again.... for a broker that will let me trade the /future, (and FX) with an Active Trader interface. FXCM seems to offer something similar but their Active Trader is web-based and only available on Market hours...so no active trading for /future outside Market hours.... I would be more than thankful to get some inputs from fellow Canadian traders!! Thank you in advance and good trades to all!!
Hi Dave, I'm in Montreal too. I don't trade futures, only options, but I use Interactive Brokers. Haven't had any problems with them and the initial setup was relatively painless. Plus they have an office on McGill College right downtown. You'll have to double-check on the futures policy but I'd assume they are quite competitive. Min deposit was $10K USD, but that was a couple years ago. Good luck, send me a PM if you wanna discuss more.
Hey Dave, Just wanted to point out that FXCM doesn't trade futures. Instead, they offer CFDs when it comes to their "futures" products. This means they are the market maker, and control the product entirely in house. There are some advantages to this, but not many (greater leverage in some cases, guaranteed stop-loss orders, etc..) but the cost is actually much higher. They control the costs by widening the spread, and compared to true commission based futures brokers the costs are often MUCH higher with CFDs. Anyway, that's not to say FXCM is bad, I just wanted to point out the differences. That aside, InteractiveBrokers has a Canadian division and allows true futures trading. Their platform leaves a lot to be desired but as far as "retail" shops go they are one of the best. Hope that helps.