In order to embark on a spread trading program... do I have to commit to 3 AM TO 1 PM (California) time frame and how much money would I need in my trading account to make a spread trading effort worth while. I was once a consistently profitable full time daytrader. I now swing trade. Screen time does come with an opportunity cost for me. But, I do love trading.
Generally speaking, the capital requirements for spread trading are less than directional trading if your execution costs (commissions) can be properly managed. Naturally, your execution costs are doubled to trade a pair in equities or futures, but in the case of many futures clearing firms the intraday margin requirements are reduced depending on the composition of the spread legs. For example, with IB's rates, you can make equity share spreads work quite well. With IB's futures rates, for example, I would steer my clients into spread combinations with a very good execution versus risk/reward skew - like natural gas spreads, crack spreads, certain equity index spreads, most currency spreads, and few longer duration treasury spread combinations. I take each client's needs into account, and generally design things around his or her unique requirements. http://www.spreadprofessor.com
In terms of timezones, I have two clients in Australia, one client in London, and several clients in the U.S. scattered from coast to coast. Hasn't been an issue yet. We do individual and group webinars using live webinar video with Skype for the audio, and the times are usually in the weekday evenings or anytime the client would like on the weekends. I've got clients trading spread combinations on every listed exchange in the world - including Kospi, Osaka, SFX, and SFE. Clients are using TT, CQG, IB, and some brokerage-provided platforms for execution. Some of my clients are proprietary, some are institutional, some manage money, and some trade their own accounts. In terms of employment agreements, since I am essentially a paid technical consultant for the client and take no other fees or revenues other than the initial consulting fee, conflicts of interest haven't been an issue to date. Generally speaking I'm a giver and not a taker. http://www.spreadprofessor.com