I have an old/dormant SEP IRA account that I would like to rollover to IB and use for daytrading futures. I understand IB's IRA account requirements and futures day trading rules but how are profits/losses managed? Can I combine my current IB account with the IRA account or will they need to remain separate? Can I extract income from the account and leave a 4K contribution at end of year? Are there penalties for extracting a monthly income from IRA-backed accounts? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks mtk
with all due respect, go to ANY website that references IRA's and get the answers to these questions. these are VERY basic IRA questions, and you should be doing at least a little research yourself imo. they are not (generally) IRA specific. for example, OF COURSE you can't take profits out of IB's IRA (or any IRA) unless you want to take a penalty (certain exceptions apply bla bla bla. it's a RETIREMENT account I****R****A
I appreciate the response but most sites don't get into the issues of trading futures against an IRA account. I understand how IRA accounts work but I'm ignorant on their use in trading futures. The research on ET and other sites deal more with trading securities, not futures. Thanks again for your reply. mtk
At IB (it may be different elsewhere) you're restricted to the overnight margin levels all the time (i.e., in a regular account you get lower, intraday margins during specific hours). IB says you can trade non-USD denominated futures in an IRA, but you need to convert a sufficient amount of currency before the fact to cover the margin (and expected drawdown, I suppose). To sum up, you can trade futures in an IRA (long or short), and there really isn't much more to it than that.
trading futures is no different from trading anything the point is - it is an IRA you cannot take profits out EARLY without penalty (exceptions apply bla bla bla0