It's called a "Performance Bond" in futures trading, not "Margin". They do not CHARGE you this! It is required as a performance bond. Commission is "charged". It's obvious you are either new to the business or a foreigner. If trading with a ridiculously low performance bond like $500/ES contract means trading larger size, this will just expedite the time it takes to drain your account to zero! Cheers
EVERYBODY calls it a margin. Even the broker websites call it a margin. They don't go by the legal terminology which is performance bond. They go by what the average futures trader can understand. And they understand the term margin. But that has nothing to do with what we are discussing. Quit trying to steer new futures people in the wrong direction. It doesn't matter what country somebody is from when trading futures.Anybody can trade futures. I talked to cybertrader on the telephone the other day. They charge 1,969.00 per emini S & P contract. I posted the link so everybody can see. READ IT IF YOU KNOW HOW. It is right there in front of your eyes. READ IT YOURSELF. Here, I will repost it here just for you, since you missed the last post or are too lazy to scroll up and read it for yourself. Cybertrader = 1,969.00 PER CONTRACT. http://www.cybertrader.com/MarginAndFees/Margin/MarginRequirements.aspx#futures
The point is that it's not a charge. A charge is deducted from your account. The USD 1969 is just the requirement to hold a contract, and is of course unlocked in your account again when you close the contract position (in addition to adding/subtracting your net profit/loss from the trade). Different brokers have different margin requirements for different futures contracts. Search around ET for discussions of whether 500 USD margins for trading the E-mini is an important criteria or not. If you're a newcomer then the quick answer is to stay away from 500 USD margin. If you're an experienced professional with a well diversified portfolio strategy then I guess you can advocate it, but usually the brokers offering it are charging a higher commission to compensate the increased risk they assume.
There are also 300.00 performance bond fee's. But these brokers charge higher commisssion. 9.00 commission, is the Round trip price for 300.00 performance bond fee's. How much of a lower performance bond can give emini traders? To be continued.....
My god you people twist yourselves into pretzels for no reason. Read the above post if you want an aswer to the margin/commission issue.
Scalper: This is the info I've been looking for. Myself and few other prop (equity) traders have been trying to find out more about prop-level futures trading platforms. Could you possibly elaborate on your above post a bit more - specifically: The leasing of a seat (costs), clearing firms that you know of and trading platforms. Your feeback would be much appreciated. Cheers.
Henry Hill Wanna Be: This my friend is the beauty of the internet, you can look like a complete a_hole and nobody knows who you really are. I would never trade Futures @ CyberTrader for one reason, NO OVERNIGHT positions are allowed. My system involves holding positions overnight. My gig is not low "margin" low life scalping 100X a day. You have me all wrong, I have nothing against fuzzy foreigners, just know it all cut and paste d_ _ _hebags like yourself that think they are tough guys on the internet. Thanks for the lesson on semantics! cheers
Several earlier posts are noting that IB's platform does not have charting but it actually does. The latest feature is plotting implied volatility real time. I am using the IB platform charts for tick type charting and my regular package for more complicated setups. One thing about IB, they are bent on giving the trader the whole deal.
Out of curiosity - is anyone here using Genesis with any success? http://www.genesisft.com/ Trademaven has had a rash of technical problems through most data feeds all year, and I do not know of any other options than Xtrader.