I have never had a problem with REFCO. They are obviously a class act. Their Pro-Trader Platform is very stable, too. However, they are not going to be able to compete with the $4.80 per round-turn that we are currently being offered on ET by Advanced Futures via Goldenberg Hehmeyer & Co. As always, it depends on how much volume you do.
I plan to start trading futures sometime in the future. Are there any platform fee's for the brokers mentioned above? Advancedfutures has a $525-650/mth platform fee, and for that professional plan you pay $3.90/rt. IB charges 4.80/rt. For a newbie, is it worth it to pay that $500 in platform fees? How much do you guys spend per month for datafeeds and charting packages?
I use IB (free data) with sierra charts (~80 per year), you could also use quotetracker (free) for charts. However, I do not need anything fancy for my charts. I also use amibroker(139) for backtesting which I feed with data from quote.com (10 per month). Again, I do not do anything fancy in my backtesting. Others will say spare no expense.
Aren't Advance future and FFastTrade charging 3.30 R.T. I have to predict how many contracts you will be trading at least in a month. If you are not doing more than 1000 contracts per monthe, then it's better to go with IB, because you are not saving with other brokers and you can use IB feed to MEDVED quotetracker for charting for free. with Global futures, velocity futures, and other two you have to pay extra 150$/mothe for esignal charting on your own.
Have you been happy with it? I contacted them yesterday and downloaded the beta demo of the new DOM software. What is there average commissions? Curious only. Bsulli
Getting a deal where you pay 3.30 RT for the minis pays off with much less contracts than 1000 even when paying USD 625 for the platform. To be specific, its 417 contracts RT (USD625/(USD 4.8-USD 3.30)=417 (rounded) so, when trading more than that in any given month then paying 3.30 RT plus a monthly platform fee in the amount of USD 625 pays off!!! I expluded all other non-tangible (difficult to quantify) issues that make one chose one broker over the other. But the math is here and its easy. My own advice to someone starting to trade is to save as much as possible on any extra costs. Do not yet sign up with esignal and other expensive data vendors. Go with brokers like IB because you can take a brake in your trading and do not need to shell out 625 each month for their trading platform. Start out with 1 contract or so and before that study a lot about statistics and market psychology. That would already give you an edge over 70% of traders (small traders). Good luck!!!
Getting a deal where you pay 3.30 RT for the minis pays off with much less contracts than 1000 even when paying USD 625 for the platform. To be specific, its 417 contracts RT (USD625/(USD 4.8-USD 3.30)=417 (rounded) so, when trading more than that in any given month then paying 3.30 RT plus a monthly platform fee in the amount of USD 625 pays off!!! I expluded all other non-tangible (difficult to quantify) issues that make one chose one broker over the other. But the math is here and its easy. My own advice to someone starting to trade is to save as much as possible on any extra costs. Do not yet sign up with esignal and other expensive data vendors. Go with brokers like IB because you can take a brake in your trading and do not need to shell out 625 each month for their trading platform. Start out with 1 contract or so and before that study a lot about statistics and market psychology. That would already give you an edge over 70% of traders (small traders). Good luck!!!