Hi Stevet Since you mentioned fungibility, here is a question I've been meaning to ask. I have an equities account and am thinking of opening a futures account with one possibly 2 brokers to protect myself from system crashes in daytrading eminis. If I open only 1 futures account and am long 2 eminis and system dies, do you think hedging by buying SPY or DIA or QQQ would present a reasonable hedge at least until the system goes back up. What ratios? Thanks in advance
GATrader absolutly - you could even hedge the S&p emini with the DIA if you really had to - but obviously the Nasdaq has to be treated on its own - but if you keep on top of specific Nas issues - u could choose to hedge with just one stock - that has shown a weakness or strength against the index - depending on your need but unfortunealy - there is gigantic inefficiency in keeping a stock account open and margined to balance the futures position two futures trading accounts is the way to go - and you even get to use the margin - for when you have a sure thing and want to add some more contracts - but remember this does not help you if globex goes i think if you have two accounts - coupled with the chances of both being screwed at the same time - is pretty unlikely - make sure it is with two different clearers though ( not just two different brokers as they may have the same clearer) - and if r unlucky - put it down as a cost of business and if you get near trading in fives - get a freind who trades the bigs
GATrader - the S&P emini value is $50/index point/contract and the SPY value is $0.10/index point/share - so you've got a 500 shares/emini contract ratio
You don´t even need a system crash to get your account positions messed up. I recommend re-reading what happened to elocal customers in the past.
metooxx thats why i had the word "manual" to differentiate the affect of the problem to computerised trading systems - with those you are going to be in big shit - no matter which way you play it
craigross, you don't use the IB system so you shouldn't make blanket statements about software unless you are an experienced user. Outside of switch issues a month or two back, the IB system has been reliable and will more stand up against any platform in terms of reliability and speed. a public forum like this always will be biased towards negative news and people typically don't log in and say - hey I did 100 trades today all executed in split second time. as IB has more clients, it gets more news and as a result a biased slant in reporting. hopefully one day you'll be so lucky. However, I'll stand by my comment that an IB client will save - after all factors are considered - a serious amount of cash over using your firm to trade. for those that doubt my comments and are concerned about IB's back up desk or customer service, open an account with both IB and craig and run the platforms side by side.
All systems go down. IB has it's own problems for sure, however we have done a lot of trades with IB and experienced our share of problems and we never waited a whole day, or anything that was unreasonable in the circumstances. And don't add me to the IB cheerleader section; they are not at the top of my list for other reasons.
Craig, recently I was looking at proedgeonline.com under the simulated trading sign on section I say your name listed as a broker. are you or ap** connected to proedge. I noticed they use jtrader as well. thanks lightfoot