Chad, I'm looking for someplace that does exceptionally intelligent margining. If I want to spread SPX options against OEX or OEF, does your margining recognize that they're virtually equivalent risks?
To join our firm you need only to have passed the 7 at some point in your life. Even if you are not currently registered. That is the PHLX rule. No other licenses are needed. Minimum capital for futures trading is $10K. As far as an office up North, I believe Seattle may be in the works but I am not sure, let me know where you are and I will look into it.
Thanks, Chad. Actually, I live in Canada, but I am in Bellingham one or two days per week. Seattle isn't too much further.
LA, you leave out the most vital element. Sure someone can make more money the higher they lever a position. But someone can lose everything even faster. IMO, if you can't afford thre 50% margin required for intraday futures trading, you shouldn't be trading futures. Increased leverage is a double edged sword. a rouge trade with an over leveraged position can be wiped out in seconds. When that happens, who comes up with the margin call - the broker and then the clearing firm. I hate to tout IB so directly but a huge advantage of trading with a firm like IB would be the comfort of knowing that another trader won't wipe the firm or its clients out and that it is well capitalized.
Great! I looked on ET's site, but couldn't find the rates or min-cap for options. Also, what else can be traded? Non-U.S. securities? FX?
Hey Def, I couldn't agree more about the leverage thing. It is something that always needs to be used wisely. When I respond to these people on this board, I know nothing about them. I am only making some assumptions based on what is implied in their posts and/or PM's. And it seems like there are a lot of people who are interested in using more leverage than they can get with retail firms for futures, or have found themselves on the wrong side of the PDT rule for equities and options. I have seen a lot of people using the volatility that we have had lately in conjunction with leverage to do great things for their accounts. As far as a trader wiping out OUR firm. It's not gonna happen. We have an amazing Risk Management team and a great bunch of traders. And we are very well capitalized. While you guys must have these rules in place and built in to the platform to manage risk and compliance on your thousands of traders, we have hundreds of traders to monitor, and very good software and systems and people to do so with. I believe it is well known that other firms have had problems with rogue traders and poorly calculated spread risk exposure blowing out accounts and digging in to the firms capital. But has anyone ever heard of that happening at ECHO or Van Buren? I haven't.
nus- Tell me what you want to trade and I will let you know what and how it can be done. As for minimum capital, I wil send you a PM.
Ms. Nusrat, You could also look at the IB web site for the complete list. You'd then know that you wouldn't be able to place an order unless you increase the amount of cash in your account. http://www.interactivebrokers.com/cgi-pub/margin_amer.pl LA, Won't argue with you about your risk mgmt systems as I do not know anything about them. The issue here is that most of the people seeking increased leverage in futures are the ones who can least afford to lose.
def, please don't send me any more PMs. Based on your posts directed to me, I knew I couldn't possibly benefit by reading it, so I didn't. If you have something to say, just say it in a public post. As for the subject line of your PM ("Agenda"): I think that most of the people who have read my posts can see for themselves that I have no agenda (regarding IB), except to bring about either (a) better treatment of customers by IB, or (b) greater awareness among traders of the alternatives to IB and of the reasons for which traders might want to explore those alternatives. I'd sincerely prefer (a). As for (b), this isn't an IB-specific board, and other traders make comparisons of brokers every day. So I don't grok your problem. If my posts bother you that much, why don't you just put my ID in your ignore-list? It's especially puzzling that you're (apparently) disturbed by something (?) I've done this evening, since you sent me the PM a little while ago, and I hadn't posted here in three days. So let's review what I've done here today: (1) I've sent PM or email to a few people who have recently posted with questions or comments about IB, directing their attention to my thread about IB's treatment of customers -- partly because you've repeatedly complained about me communicating to such people in public postings. (2) I've posted once to ask if I'm accurately comparing IB's futures margins to Echo's. (3) I've posted replies to three people who posted questions or comments about IB usage or glitches, asking them -- without making any editorial comment of my own -- about whether or not they'd sought help from IB's official help-desk, or why they hadn't, or what response they'd received from the help-desk. Anyone who's interested (I can't think why) can click on my ID and see a list of those posts for themselves. So again, I don't see the problem. Just block my posts. I don't block yours, because they're frequently useful.