How frequently does everyone trade emini futures in general? I'm trying to figure out how active am I compared to average and whether I should look for better deals with brokers based on my activity. I'm doing about 350-400 round trips a month (700-800 trades), around 3-5 contracts each and planning to up the size to 10 sometime mid 2003. This amounts to roughly 2000-4000 contracts a month today and possibly 7000-8000 cars in a year. Currently using IB, it's pretty cheap at $2.40 per side, but if there are any other alternatives, I'm willing to look at them. Not very happy about IB reliability too, but if no other choice is available, I'll probably stay with them. One important precondition is: the broker must have API to place orders automatically via external application. Any ideas come to your mind?
I think that's a lot of trades but you probably won't do any better than IB. The real problem is we need to have the big contract on globex. They could use the existing floor for a bar maybe.
I do 2-6 round trips a day. I only pick the best spots I can. Overtrading is a nightmare....put you in the funny farm my friend....
As a discretionary trader...right now I'm getting about 3-7 trade signals per trading day and averaging about 3-5 trades per trading day. Several months ago I was averaging about 7 trades per trading day out of 7-10 trade signals per trading day. I think my average had declined because there aren't as many Short opportunities that I'm comfortable with and I'm still slow in adjusting to Long opportunities (missing more than I want to miss). Shop around and see if you can find a broker that will offer a better deal than IB or more bells & whistles you can use to make your trading more easier. NihabaAshi
I'm thinking $2.40 per contract or 2.40 per group of five. In otherwords 4 would be 9.60 and 5 would be 2.40 and just call every gruop of 5 a big contract. And yes, I agree, the pit should be turned into a bar.
The only way for you to dramatically lower your trading costs is to lease a seat on the CME and become a member trader. Members get a reduction in exchange clearing fees of about $1 a side. The cost is $3,500 a month. It sounds like your present trading would make this close to a wash, but if you can really move up to sizes of 5's and 10's (doubling your volume), then it would be worth it.
What is this love affair with IB/Timberhill? 4,000 to 8,000 r/t's a month? If you are not bullshitting you can call http://www.gelbergroup.com With Gelber your commissions will be half of what you are paying at IB.
well, I went there and I didn't see anything about cheap commissions. They must be too low to publish.