Hello, I live in the United Kingdom and am interested in trading emini sp futures. Can I open an account with a U.S. futures broker, if I'm a non-U.S. resident? Any recommendations? Thanks SM
Yes you can. I believe all of them accept UK residents. I have an account with Interactive Brokers but if you want charting, great customer service etc... try some of the others. IB is a discount broker which has the benefit that you can trade many markets from one account. If you specialise in the eminis others could be better.
Yes there are various options. I am a UK resident and trade e-mini's (primarily ES) through Inter-active Brokers. I am very satisfied with them in terms of order execution through their 'Trader Workstation' platform. I use Bracket Trader as a simple front end to make it easier as TWS can seem quite complex. Given the current financial instability I think it is advisable to be with a big firm with financial depth like IB, as security of trading funds is now as important as preservation of capital in trading. HTH ---- Pirate
If you plan to day trade then the e-minis are the way to go. I use Interactive Brokers from the UK too. For trading longer periods than intra day you might want to consider a spread bet firm for tax free profits. Actually given the huge volatility we have at the moment, the extra spread paid to the bookie is negligible for intra day trades lasting longer than one hour.. But this volatility wont last forever.
Businessman is correct. I neglected to mention that I also have a spread betting account and use it primarily to trade Forex which works very well as Forex trends particularly well in most normal market conditions and the spreads are tight on the majors. I have dabbled with day trading e-mini's but found that as the unit of measurement is the full S&P e-mini point it is much more beneficial/flexible to trade the e-mini's through a broker like IB. Pirate