Here are a few futures brokers that have accepted accounts from Canadian residents in the past: - Global Futures - Deep Discount Trading - AMP - Mirus Quebec is probably the most retail trader friendly province in Canada.
I am also from Quebec, and Global Futures told me they only take Ontario and Alberta residents. As for Deep Discount Trading, their commissions and margins look great, but would you trust anyone with such a sketchy-looking website? Are they reputable?
Yes they are. We have been through this DDT web site discussion over and over and over and it is simply a purely functional web site which has much more information than other brokers' sites. They clear through Crossland which is where your funds are anyway. But it will probably be the same situation with *all* brokers, including Crossland/DDT as to which provinces have restrictive legislation prohibiting U.S. brokers from accepting clients from those provinces, and which do not, because it is just a matter of the laws in the respective provinces. Quebec has highly protectionist policies and I strongly suspected that they would have such restrictions on foreign brokers, as does B.C. for example. Let's make sure we put the blame where it belongs - on those provincial governments with restrictions on foreign (U.S.) brokers. So try DDT but probably it will be the same and you will have to live with using Interactive Brokers Canada or move to Ontario or Alberta.
From DDT website: * Foreign Traders Are Accepted From Most Countries "Except" Canada* A year ago Mirus and AMT were a good choice for futures, but not for the options. Frankly, for futures, I'd go with IB Canada without second thought. Their not-so-small intraday margin will keep you from overtrading and being under capitalized, which is good , imho.
It seems that not only is IB recommended for Canadians, but it may be just about the only choice. One reason for hesitation with IB is I've read that tick data with them is not very good. I guess a different data provider would solve that problem. As for options on futures, sorry, I don't have much info for you there. All I can say is that out of the brokerages I've contacted so far, none of them take Canadians except IB and RJO.
IB is fine for futures options except their margins are modestly higher in a few cases. You will just have to work around this by using spreads rather than naked short options in some cases (which is safer anyway). As for tick data, that only matters for people who absolutely positively have to have every last tick hundreds of times a second. This is a tiny minority of traders who are using software based on tick counts in my opinion. IB samples up to 30 times a second which is good enough for 99% of users, and is actually far better than risking getting backed up with stale quotes, which happens to some other providers at times of peak load as they attempt the (almost) impossible task of delivering "every last tick". Plus IB is extremely low cost. Plus you have Canadian account insurance with IB Canada up to one million dollars which you do not have with a U.S. broker. So just go with/ stay with IB Canada for now and fine tune your positions a little where necessary to keep risk and margin down (which you should be doing anyway).
Even after spreading margin with IB is still more expensive than with SPAN brokers. For products I trade it could be +100%. Otherwise IB is a great broker, and I fully agree with your thought about tick data. Plus IB is covered by SIPF, which is quite valuable nowadays. As usual, give and take.
I have to say, you are both quite convincing! Those are some good points, and having the CIPF coverage is a big plus. As is my nature, I am always curious about other possibilities, but IB does seem to be the best choice for Canadians.