I dint read all the posts but here is my two sense, MB Trading broker, Ninja Trader for the dome and Quote Tracker for charting,
I trade e minis and like the combo of IB and Tradestation. Ten round trips per month pay my Tradestation platform fee. My data fees come to 48 dollars per month for everything I need. After ten trades, I do the remainder of the month's trades at IB, saving .70 per round trip trade cost (4.72 TS vs. 4.02 IB). I have used E-signal with IB, but found Tradestation more to my liking since I use several workspaces. I also like the option of being able to trade one account should the other encounter issues at the precise time a setup is maturing. I did not have adequate capital to maintain two PDT accounts a few years back, so I switched to the e minis. Haven't looked back since.
It seems most people are basing their replies on their experience with trading futures. I trade strictly stocks for now. Is there a big difference in how broker and platform needs? Also, why is that most people who consider themselves more of a prop trader tend to trade futures? Or so it seems like it on this forum.
First, commissions for stocks and futures are calculated very differently. So, a stock broker that happens to offer futures may not have very competitive commission for the latter and vice versa. Not to metion rebates for adding liquidity and interest rates where overnight leverage is involved. (Futures have embedded leverage; so, a futures trader is not borrowing from a broker.) Second, except for technology stocks, equities don't offer as wide everyday range compared to futures. So, (if we exclude attempts at market-making), stock trading is largely about finding a stock that is likely to move move. Futures trading more about learning a particular instrument. Third, because a typical future on a typical day has more short-term volatility than a typical equity, futures traders are more concerned with "speed": fast data feed, fast trading platform, fast execution. Equity traders are more concerned with liquidity: which platform can absorb larger size. Besides exchanges, brokers may connect to black pools where "bulk" liquidity is way higher. Some brokers run black pools. It's because: 1) Futures trade in a wide range compared to bid/offer. So, it seems it's easy to make money 2) There is lots of discussion regarding futures... and talking about view on the direction people don't give away any secrets, nor do they risk prosecution for market manipulation (talking up a stock they own) 3) With futures you can make a very good living trading just one instrument. People think: if I can learn to trade ES I can trade 300 contracts a pop. 4) On US equities there is a pattern daytrading rule that requires $25,000 of capital for short-term trading. One can daytrade futures with as little as $500
Ya, I'm also a fan of TOS, despite some minor charting glitches once in awhile. A trader collegue of mine opened his Lightspeed account a few weeks back (but still uses TOS for charts), his rate is $1 minimum ticket and .0045 cents per share. You may also want to check out Speedtrader's rate of .00395 per share, as I don't believe they have a minimum ticket charge, however I'm not 100% sure. Hope that helps.
Lee, Thank You very much! You have been most informative. In those two paragraphs you have taught me more about futures then I ever knew. You gave me all the right answers and have peaked my interest into trading futures. I am still getting down everything I need to know about Equities, Options are next, but I will definitely jump into futures at some point. You have definitely sold me on futures! I don't want to just be a jack of all trades. I'd like to be really knowledgeable on Equities, Options and Futures. That's three separate avenues to potentially earn more.
I am still very impressed by TOS and LightSpeed. But, it seems IB has the best price/ execution/ data. The only thing they are missing is a good platform/ Charting. Since, I mostly trade Equities I think I can survive with their platform and just use something else for Charting such as Worden, ESignal or QuoteTracker.
Does anyone have experience using Sierra to execute. I'm very pleased with their charting capabilities but have never used them as a front end. Any comments?
You are most welcome! I'm sure you can find a few good reading lists on this forums. Regarding options, they possess characteristincs of their own (of options as a class ass opposed to the the characteristics of the underlying like commodity futures). For example, a value of an option naturally decreases over time (gamma). So, you may find it helpful to separate studying options as a purely speculative instrument (option price is usually lower than the margin for a corresponding future), as a hedge and option-specific strategies such as "iron condors".
You are right about options possessing different characteristics. I know their basic concept, but I do not know them nearly enough to dare trade them. The formulas remind of college Calculus. Sometimes that scares me away haha I've heard of the iron condor strategy for options, but you have me kind of lost there.