Hello, A brief background... I am on my way to becoming a CTA, last year I passed my Series 3 exam. But I haven't finalized my application yet. I am still struggling with getting the QEPs 4.7 Exemption or not. That's another story though... I am about sign up a client; that account will be a managed account and those trades will be cleared at another broker via give-ups. I am also currently trading my own account. So I will be trading two accounts, one for myself and a give up account for the client. My broker is OK with setting up a give-up account. But they are hesitant to do 'block trade' allocations since I won't generate a lot of commissions. Ideally, I'd like to send the trades once and then get them allocated. I'll probably have to send the trade orders twice, once for each account for now. In the past, I traded with Interactive Brokers via their API and was very pleased with it. I talked to them about give up accounts about a year ago and I was told that they would do that for accounts > $10M or $30M (I can't remember which one...). But they do have that Friends & Family account structure where the advisor can pre-allocate trades. I am looking for suggestions for futures brokers with automated / API trading access, give ups and block trade allocations for small accounts. Are there any competitors to IB? Cheers.
Could you please care to elaborate? I am looking for people's experiences. I talked to Interactive Brokers yesterday. For a give up account, you either need to deposit $1M with them, or the account (at the other broker) needs to be > $30M. Information like this usually is not available online.
I believe the NFA is currently soliciting opinions on the possible elimination of the 4.7 QEP exemptions... I've heard from several sources that it's only a question of time until they're gone. So, I wouldn't put that much time into thinking about it!
I also think that even after elimation all current 4.7 exemptees would no longer have their elimations valid. Personally, my opinion is that eliminating the exemption, makes no sense, in that it solves no problem and just merely provides the false comfort of "more regulation".