These are the rates I found.. I assume you mean the mini and not full contract. You must add exchange fees. There can also be volume discounts. The overnight margins are set by exchange and are same across board. OEC allows $500 intraday margin. Day trading margins typically vary from $500 to around $1500. Most firms require 5k to open an account. OEC 1.29 (free) Tradestation 1.20 (+ platform) MBTrading .95 cents Infinity --- Not sure InteractiveBroker .85 cents I'd say IB has the best rates but I think they require 10k to open.
You're forgetting Velocity Futures and Deep Discount Trading, both of which have essentially equal published rates (when including platform data fees at DDT) at around .65 a contract/side. 40 cents better than IB per round trip with much better data.
what about TD Ameritrade? does anyone know what kind of margin they offer on trading futures? thanks.
OEC doesn't have any platform fees. The deep discount/infinity rates look really interesting.. I'm only trading 1 lot now but if I were doing size then I'd certainly look at that closely. I'd like to see how everything stacks up with platform fees. I also found Eagle Market Makers They are listed on the CME website.. no rates offered but look interesting.
re DDT, i agree they have the lowest published rates (w/ advantage coming in a close second) however when you buy a platform thru them they charge a per side fee in addition to the monthly cost of the platform. for example, NT is 0.15 per side plus $60 a month so make sure you add that back in when comparing to other brokers. http://www.deepdiscounttrading.com/TradingPlatforms.html re TDA margins, IIRC they allow half of exchange margin intraday (like ib). they're pretty conservative much like ib and won't allow any of this $500 per car for the ES which will be listed as the cause of death for traders when the next black swan hits during regular EST market hours.
Does it really matter ? If your strategy is that thin in terms of margin and slippage, then why not just lease a seat and pay member rates... That's where the savings is quite frankly. And I have heard nothing but dread from retail punters cutting someone's throat for a nickel or so.