Do IB accept people easy or do they check credit/employment and other stuff?. Is their claim for $4.02 rt for everything including all exchange fees? I am looking for Futures broker and I think I'm just going to go with IB because they are reliable, have low comm and can trade all securities. I am a student under 26 with part time job(professional job) and I will start with $5000 enough for 2 ES contracts. Any experiences with IB trading futures? Please do share.
no problems with IB. I heard customer service was bad, but both times I needed help I had someone on chat within 10 minutes and it was easy. I would gather more than 5k for ES contracts or you could be bled to death. $4.00 r/t is correct. I've used them for a few years trading ES and EUR/USD with zero problems. Play with the charts a bit and you will get the results you want.
the questionnaire at the opening the account contain several questions about your income and assets(net\liquid). for futures you probably not going to pass,unless you lie seriously..check their website for those questions and minimums. they not going to check your credit score or employment. it's all automatic,but subject to manual reviews,if something questionable pops up.
IB will look at your application to see what you show for your annual income, and your years of experience in trading the products for which you are requesting trading privileges. I do not think IB will check your credit history or contact your employer. For the products you plan to trade you need to show adequate experience and enough income to afford trading losses.
I think the minimum is $3000 to open an individual account for someone 26 or younger in age. The OP may have been aware of that as he mentioned he was less than 26 years of age.
So it looks like you are a young professional (forget about that "part time" thing), you come from upper middle class family, maybe even "high net worth", and as such you have been exposed to the capital markets since childhood, you have probably even traded stocks and mutual funds since high school, etc. Read the first post on p.5 here: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=212686&perpage=6&pagenumber=5 Make sure to check all types of trading instruments on the application form (stocks, options, forex, etc), not just futures, so that you are approved for everything and don't have to worry about filing any more forms in the future. If, let's say, you are 22, then you can easily have 4 years of medium trading experience. In Canada all brokers will make a "hard check" of your credit file when you want to open a new margin account ("Reg T margin" in your case), maybe in the US they don't do this. I have never heard of a broker calling an employer to verify applicant's employment status, at least when it's just a regular margin account. It would be best if you could come up with 10k to open an account, you can pull some funds out later after you start trading. If you are applying as a student from poor family then they may automatically slap your account with some restrictions, you better google this topic before you decide to go this route.
5000$ for 2 ES? I don't know who you are and how you trade, and don't know much about trading styles different from mine, but... 1) I'm not sure 10000$ would suffice for trading 1 ES my way 2) I'd suppose that trading 2 ES with 5000$ would require tight stops -> a lot of trades -> a small average gain per trade (are you scalping?). So you'd need very low commissions, and 4.02 per RT is not so low. But anyway I heard of trading champions using tight stops, a lot of contracts and high commissions, so wish you are like them. But remember: unless you know very well what you are doing (and you are a bit young), being undercapitalized is the best way to ruin. I'd like to know how IB policy of letting young people trade with small money is going for them: if they are successful, this would be another sign that I was really silly at 25.
a better question would have been, "I fibbed a litlle on the account application and got approved. Any need to be worried?" If you are afraid to open an account I doubt you will overcome the fear that is about to beset you.
The problem is that if you lie on any type of application (including opening a brokerage account) that involves credit, and subsequently incur large losses that exceed your account balance, they could go after you for criminal fraud.