I'm going to dive in a and take a swing at the ESTX50, is anyone else here trading this instrument actively? I'm a nocturnal person and I might as well be working the market at night like I do during the day. Seems like this is a reasonable instrument to learn the ropes on before moving to the monstrous DAX contract. If there are any euro futures traders here do you guys hang out in chat here or elsewhere? Any specific nuances I should be aware of RE: this contract? Thanks,
Have you talked to them on how the currency conversion works? Last time I checked, I was told an instant margin loan is created in Euro and the cash in the dollar acct is used as colateral. Then, to convert it back to USD, I would have to use IB's IDEAL currency exchange and exchange the Euros for the USD. Just want you to know in case you haven't looked into it yet. -FastTrader
Thanks for the heads up, is there really any drawback to this other than having to click some extra buttons? Thanks,
Extra clicks, plus commission to convert the currency from EUR to USD. It's not really a big deal, but something to keep in mind. If I were trading ESTX50, I wouldn't convert it back to USD until there was a sufficient amount to be converted over. Here's a link to IB's FX fees page: http://www.interactivebrokers.com/html/generalAccount/currencyCommissions.html -FastTrader
I assumed I'd eat the spread (which is nominal) on a EUR/USD coversion, but I did not anticipate they would charge me an FX trading commission! Hmmm... this is quite disturbing if indeed the case, I agree this means I'll have to take a chunk of my account and just keep in in EUR. Thanks for the info, and I'll check out that uk site too. Thanks,
There usually insn't a commission on FX, you just pay the spead. The brokers margin is included in the spread. Runningbear