Lovely post. Clear, concise, knowledgeable, factual, witty, slightly polemical. Thank you for taking the time. That's something different. Also could we keep politics out of this.
what politics are you talking about? It was a technique often used by brokers who had discretionary accounts to make sure their losing customer had some wins now and then to keep him happy
it's not illegal to go long in your roth and short in your reg, but what's the point? You would still have to guess right, and commissions and spread eat up about what you would pay in taxes. you need a full service broker who can assign trades after they are completed a full service broker can put it all on and tell the fcm, "I will assign them later.
If you have to post the results "real-time", that likely wouldn't work. Possible if only one can "post all of the losers to one account, then post all of the winners to another account". Or, am I missing something?
Putting aside the legal/illegal aspect to this, you are making the assumption in advance, that you know you will make or loose money on a trade. If you could do that consistently, I would focus on that. Most of us have a "expectation" of profitability or we would not enter the trade. You are looking at a higher level of certainly. What if profits go the wrong way? I would avoid this.
it's not illegal for a full service broker with discretionary accounts to put it all on and assign them later, he functions just like a CTA, and things move fast and he starts each day looking at his AUM. But it is illegal if the FTC determines that you are routinely assigning winning trades to one account and losing trades to another. politics? You think mentioning a politicians name affects my opinion of mirror accounts? go down to the basement and I will bitch and moan with you from the sun comes up to the cattle come home about politics. But up here we are just talking about money and staying out of court. (they hardly ever jail anybody anymore.) They would rather just collect the fine. And if you are a broker you must determine if the risk of the fine is worth the possible payoff.
yes, you are missing it, the fcm knows what you are good for and doesn't really care how you split them up
you can't do this anymore with a discount broker where all trades are assigned immediately to the appropriate account
for instance, even if you are 100% legal and you want to put on a shitload of corn, and the market is moving fast. You just want to get all of your customers in. Later on after the trade you assign contracts to each account based on their account value. And the fcm is cool with that, because in his mind you are his only customer. He knows how much your AUM is.
and getting back to the loonie who started this thread, please tell us your secret for being "consistently profitable" or for that matter being a consistent loser.