Hey there I have come across 2 platforms for trade execution that have zero charges and are therefore superb for those of us who swing trade future spreads. Does anyone know of any other platforms? and yes I totally get the advantages of paying $1000pm for xtrader or cqg but for some of my trades i just dont need it, I just need a bid/offer buy and sell button. Here are the 2 I have come across: TWS (interactive brokers) - zero charge, and yes its a pain to use imo, not user friendly at all. Firetip Basic - zero charge, I haven't used this but a few discount brokers offer it. They also have firetip pro at $49pm with no other charges. The next sensibly priced option for trading spreads seems to be CQG Trader which is billed at $25pm + 25c per contract up to a max of $420pm. So for a spreader you are going to be paying the $420pm unless you are doing tiny volume. thanks.
If you want free, and are willing to keep track of your positions on a spread sheet or pay $100/month for an external margin/position managment program, we can offer CME Direct and get their RFQ system. You will be limited to only CME products. Email me your name and contact to talk about this and our services. I use this for my personal account and only trade option spreads.
Futures only no options. The platform would need to record the trades and offer all major exchanges including CME suite, ICE, Eurex. As I said TWS and Firetrip pro offer this completely free of charge. I am hearing about another platform Transact AT which is also totally free. I dont know why people pay $500pm for a platform when they have a $20k account. That's $6k pa or 30% of their account gone just in platform costs in the course of a year lol. That's before paying for data, commission, nfa & clearing.
Realtick has a $100 version called realtick Express. https://www.lightspeed.com/technology/trading-software/ Bob
The base price for X_TRADER and the TT platform in $50. https://www.tradingtechnologies.com/platforms/pricing/
Clear a very good Tier 1 Chicago FCM and use their 24 hour execution desk. You will be be charged $1 per R/T per contract for the service. I have a growing cadre of clients who choose to go this route and it makes sense. Some of these same FCMs will also lease you a platform like CTS-4 on a transactional basis.
yes I am aware of TT pricing. The thing is for spreaders I would only need to do 1600 round trips in a month @ 30c per side and I will hit your $1000pm monthly cap. That's a big chunk of change. I get it for lower volume directional traders.
another option thanks. It's still a big chunk of change more than TWS via interactive brokers which is totally free albeit with it's mystic margining and quirks.
Do not ever ever ever again in your wildest dreams compare TT's futures spreading capability (and the exchange product suites they cover) to IB TWS. I've had both and I've used both.