MK020, IB would set you up a universal account that pays interest. IB would moves move cash to and from your futures account to cover the exposure in the futures account. You would not have to keep up with the cash movements as long as you have more than adequate cash in your universal account. I have had an account with IB for about 19 years. I trade stocks and futures through IB. I think IB has the best of everything (best company president, best trading platforms, provides a way for FDIC insurance up to $2,500,000.00 on cash above what is covered by SPIC and was paying 1.19 percent as of April 18, 2018, low "all in" commissions, and supper fast executions). Open an account with IB and you will never look back, only forward. I expect to have an account with IB until I die or Tom Peterffy is no longer making the decisions at IB.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Do you have experience day trading futures? I would be using the account to make a lot of day-trades with futures like ES. I'm interested on how they would calculate my amount of "idle cash". I wouldn't hold positions overnight, but could enter positions prior to 930 AM EST.
You can, but they have a habit of making up the rules as they go along. In volatility they will be one of the first to increase and have one of the highest margin requirements of any broker, being one of the last to reduce. Basically for what you would consider a semi-discount average retail broker, $10k deposit, they have a habit of working to timeframes and requirements towards institutional brokers. It doesn't balance, better to have a pure discount broker as backup and primary broker for main funds. But they have the marketing, so everyone buys in to it. Given the pathetic interest rates paid on cash these days that is the last thing I worry about, ease of access to funds, stability in margin requirememts across volatility, instruments traded, platforms supported. On paper IB looks to have it all, but on a professional level mostly no. If you're a beginner it wouldn't matter and could actually benefit, one advantage is they have access to IEX, but for trading only futures there are better options and combinations depending on capital.
I like the ease of their API, and abundance of example programs that exist with it. With the interest rate they currently pay of 0.0118, a 250k account would get 2950 in interest over the year. If I were to make 2000 round trips on ES in the year, the interest essentially drops my "all in" rate to 1.30 per side. Better than what I'm seeing from others. But I'm happy to take suggestions if you have another broker to suggest.
Right, you're in it for income trading, very different game, I'm in it for capital trading. Amp for discount, Wedbush via introducing broker for primary, CQG as platform so same tech on both. Done, I love being experienced. In very good mood, drove across the Swiss mountains overnight and just had breakfast here. Piazza del Duomo, Firenze, Italia.
MK020, When I take a futures position I hope I will be holding it for several days. I may close the position in 5 minutes if I think I made a mistake and took the wrong side; but, I would never have taken the position if I thought I might want to close it within a day. I hope to do better than that. I never look at what IB is doing to cover their risk for that is what I hope they will do to protect IB and IB client's accounts.
I would not recommend funding with T-Bills in an equity account where you hold any debit balances as you can incur interest charges. You can if you only day trade equities or options or only have credit balances from options or short stock-or in my example, a futures account at an FCM.
What do you think is high, and with which other broker(s) do you compare them to get to that conclusion?
Only 1 lot round-trips? If you would do more, (since 1 ES is only 134k... and you have 250k in account... so to me 1 lot seems a bit low), you're not going to get to 1.30....