Yes, but also asked about providers you would recommend (i.e, administrators, attorneys, etc.). Thanks!
Well, if under the a certain amount of clients and assets, you don't need to be registered. 15 or less or what state laws say.
I think you still can get compensation with ib advisor account if AUM is less than a certain amount (like 1.5M), and less than 15 clients. It depends on your state of residency. If you are a CTA, you need to pay ss, medicare tax for your trading profit, i think. I don't recall where i read that info. Please collect me if i am wrong. That was the reason that put me off the registration several years ago. Since most of the income is coming mainly from my own trading account and not from incentive fee, I don't like to see a reduction in my after-tax profit.
I guess I missed that part. I'm using Bart Mallon as my fund attorney. He gave me a very fair price, and has generated really quality work. Unfortunately the NFA disclosure approval process is STILL not completed (2.5 months and counting), but I'm not going to blame him for that. I was actually traveling overseas while he did *everything* for me, starting with nothing but a blank piece of paper. I didn't personally have to get involved until the fingerprinting, and of course taking the actual series 3 itself. I spoke to several top-tier alternative investment law firms as well, and my conclusion is that there's really no advantage to using anything along those lines. (As you know, I *do* believe in using a top-tier audit/tax firm.) I looked at a number of admin firms. I finally went with Piedmont Fund Services; if you want a contact there, let me know. They're a smaller firm, but I don't think you really need prestige from the admin firm either. They weren't the cheapest, startup price starts at ~$1k and goes up to $1600/mo depends on what services you want from their a la carte menu... the least expensive bid I got was $700/mo from a firm down in southern California. But Piedmont has been a pleasure to work with, and I like their online module + statement reporting format. I didn't think I'd want their cash management services, but it's actually making my life quite a bit easier. I'm using Vision Financial as my FCM. I had limited choices as, for now at least, I'm using Ninja + Rithmic as my trading platform. But I have no complaints at all about Vision, they've been absolutely great to work with so far. I don't think I would've gotten this far without Vision, in all honesty. Prices are not at all the cheapest, but the service has been more than worthwhile. If you expect to be dealing in volume, if you're demanding but low maintenance... let me know, I can provide a contact there as well. I'm not sure Vision is going to be able to do much for me from a capital introduction point of view, so that's one thing you may want to consider. Vision actually has a great CTA-selling program, with an aggressive IB network... but I guess not much help for a CPO like myself.
IB also technically doesn't care if you don't file taxes. The IRS takes care of that. Similarly, you're in violation of securities laws if you trade commodities on behalf of someone else, for profit, without registration. (Excluding the exemptions mentioned before.)