The NFA is a goddamn joke. They make busy work for themselves by nitpicking/overregulating small players.
My understanding of the CME fee schedule is that Non-Member rates on Micros are $0.40/rt and Member Lease rates are $0.14/rt. So, at 56 rt/day @ 20 trading days per month, that’s a savings of $291.20 against the cost of the seat lease. I’m not including NFA fees. I’m all for anyone bucking The Man, but at the same time be realistic and do the math and do what makes the most sense - as I’m sure you will. I wish you good fortune !
About 18 years ago, as I recall, Harris Brumfield (owner of TT and monster trader back in the day) sued the NFA over fees they were collecting on his Eurex trades. Of course, Eurex is a European exchange that operates in the US courtesy of a CFTC “no action” letter. At the time I traded Eurex in Chicago clearing Commerzbank so it wasn’t an issue for me. I have mixed feelings about SRO’s like the NFA. If there wasn’t an NFA, then the CFTC would be doing the registrations and Exchange/FCM/Broker/Bank audits and enforcement actions and they would be charging a fee - so my guess is that it’s a matter of who and how much you’d rather pay because you’re going to pay somebody to do the work.
We have a gazillion of products out there. The number of markets one can trade is almost limitless. Why would anybody want to trade a product that is clearly designed to suck in retail in order to feed market makers??? Go leave! Trade a different product or go to another exchange. On the other hand the prices for exchange seats are dumping. I mean, CME division is what? 400k? That's ridiculous compared to 2008 when the bid was 1.5M And now you don't even have to buy a membership, you can lease one for pocket change. If you don't have the money or the volume to make up for 3k in data/software/membership, you prrobably should not trade high turnover strategies anyways. Every B&M retailer pays more for rent and staff... In case you still want to chase the S&P you could trade the ES, SPY, SPX Options, yada, yada, yada... But then a petition??? To lower fees??? How on earth would that help??? Either man up and pay a lawyer or shut the fk up!
IMO, micros are the ideal product to learn how to swing trade an outright or to test an automated trading system. You’d better be on the selective end of the spectrum if you’re scalping it. Just my own observation, YMMV
Exactly: Swingtrade But the "I only have 5000 USD to my name and I wanna be a daytrader" guy will bleed out 100%
At one time I sat next to a Eurex scalper at DE Trading who was and is a good friend. He calls himself a scalper - but I consider him to be an apex ambush predator. He would sit there for hours waiting for his trade set-up - and then he’d take them all. If there were three thousand there he’d take them all. Only took a handful of trades per day and they were usually good ones.