Does anyone knows if I can trade futures or qqq with Roth IRA funds ? Which brokers would accept such arrangement? Thanks, Walter
I believe you can use ~30% of your IRA equity to trade futures with tradestation securities. I looked into them for a bit, but they had some really high fees ($250-300/yr in trustee fees). The 30% total must exceed a $7500 minimum. Trading the Q's shouldn't be a problem as long as you don't want to go short. Some brokers allow long calls/puts in IRA accounts. Later, Cracked
Wheh i was approvinf IRA trades years ago, I wouldn't even allow a client to trade options...Just covered calls,
You can trade whayever you want as long as no margin is required, an Ira is a cash account, therefore nothing short and only covered options.
Visit Millennium Trust (did I spell that right ?? ) at http://www.mtrustcompany.com and check out your options there. Use all of your IRA for trading except for $500
You can trade just about anything. The key is to separate the account from the broker. By setting up a account at a firm that just acts as the plan administrator, you can do anything in an IRA (buy/sell futures, sell naked options, speculate in a horse racing partnership, oil drilling partnerships, etc.). My wife and I have accounts at Mid-Ohio Securities http://www.midoh.com. After funding the account I just setup a regular futures account using the IRA plan as the account holder. None of the 30-40% of assets max. in futures problems, (100% of funds less a few thousand required to stay in the plan account ...with interest). By doing it this way, the broker doesn't have a fudiciary responsibility and you get to trade it any way you want.
One caution to what acracy says. Be careful that you don't trade on margin or any form of borrowed money using an IRA. The IRS regs on IRA accounts explicitly prohibit using an IRA as a collateral. If the IRS catches someone doing that, they will declare the pledged money to a be distribution from out of the IRA. Be careful with IRS, they can open up a major can of woop-ass on those that fail to follow their voluminous, poorly explained, and torturous regs. Trade well, Traden4Alpha