Can US residents buy stock options on the Canadian (Montreal) exchange?

I'm getting conflicting info on this -- IB told me this is prohibited by the CFTC, but I couldn't find any reference to that on their website. Moreover, IB's own US-facing website has a section laying out margin requirements for Canadian stock options. (Though the IB website is full of all kinds of outdated / deprecated info so...) Anyone know for certain?

 

Not sure why if you are a us citizen, you would want option exposure in canada. The liquidity is terrible on canadian options. I know this because i write options on Canadian stocks. if you can, stick to us options. Montreal exchange is brutal compared to the liquidity you find elsewhere.

 

...because you may want to purchase options on a company that's not interlisted on a US exchange?

 

CFTC does not regulate equity options is the US, not sure why they would have regulations on foreign securities. CFTC is for futures. If it were prohibited, it would be by Canadian regulators. Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) would be where you would look for that.

I have no knowledge of this restriction and our clients would have to trade those listed on US exchanges. Here is a resource for Interlisted Companies. I'm sure there are better ones. http://www.tmxmoney.com/en/research/interlisted.html


Bob

 

test it. enter an order way from the market and see the result.

 

I like the way you put a positive spin on your co's lack of access.

 

...yeah, im confused about whether he's saying that his clients are restricted to only being able to trade things on US exchanges(?) But just prior he says that he's unaware of any such restriction. So unclear whether he's saying that he believes this restriction does or does not exist.

 

The extent of my knowledge and what my firms offers are two different subjects. If I was confusing, that was not my intent.

 

The CFTC actually does play a role in foreign transactions. Exchanges like Eurex trade european options and unless the account has a $100,000,000 it is prohibited by the CFTC from trading those products. The Montreal has a cross border regulatory relationship with the SEC - so their products are OK. One caveat is finding a broker with access and you trade in the $CDN so you will have the cost to exchange the currency - brokerage is generally about twice the US and there may be a significant minimum commission. They are also horribly illiquid.

 

@ajacobson
non-european trader need 100mm to trade stoxx options?

just curious why..