Does anyone have any experience trading forex through Tradestation and if so how are the fills, slippage, etc. anything i should be concerned about? In addition, I have heard if I have a futures account and want to trade forex in same account that $ must settle and that takes one day before i can use the margin for my futures trading. Can anyone who trades both give me some info on this statement and if it is accurate or not?
the Futures account and Forex account (as well as Equities account) are separate account numbers. You have to deposit new funds for each type of instruments.
Found this out last night... thanks for this. Don't know why seperate accounts are needed for everything maybe because they go through gain for forex??? Anyways, thanks for the response, tc...
since you are TradeStation user, hop over to the TS Forum and search for threads on Gain Capital (their clearing partner). mostly negatives from existing users ..... the margin requirements are different for Futures and Forex (and Equities), that could be a reason. so if u think u can trade futures and forex on same account, then how do u know what's your buying power for today? 100:1 on forex and less on futures contracts.
An update on this topic for anyone interested... tradestation plans on integrating their equities, futures, and forex accounts into one in the future. The data for this isn't being announced but I was told by a representative it is a work in progress.
If you go to the forums and search Universal Accounts you will find a nice thread in which people have been clamoring for this for what I believe to be about 2 years. I gave up hope a while back when it seemed that they just didnt regard it as a priority. At the time I had an account at IB and they seemed to have the system down. I recall that the best solution for me at the time was to funnel all trades over to IB from TS and have them in their Universal account. If your set on doing FX and Futures its something to consider given the length of time they've been working on it. Don't get me wrong I like, and find the TS platform very comfortable/stable just not user friendly in that regard.
i enquired but still have not open the separate Forex account with TS (i already have Equities account with them). i found the spreads hard to read with the 5 decimal places quotes and having to pay "twice" on commissions: firstly pay spread to Gain Capital (their clearing partner) and then $2.50 per trade commission to TS. glad to see TS folks here trading forex, and the universal account certainly is good news.
Any update on the universal account ? Do we still have to fund separately the futures/forex/equity account ? It does add up in international wire fee and it's not convenient at all to switch buying power from one product to the next.