Hermit_trader, How's the hermit hut up in the mountain? For open outcry contracts, I use Refco. I pay 20$ rt (all fees included except Globex), but I know some traders are paying 10$ - 15$ with Refco. More will come into this forum and will give you suggestions of other good brokers, so you'll have plenty of choices. Cheers!!
Why don't you try to find a floor broker in a pit somewhere? What you wanna trade, maybe I can direct you to somewhere? I know people all over the NYMEX and Comex. I'm thinking that is probably what you wanna trade, energy and metals, right? If that is the case, PM me. I'll try to help you out. I'm interested in getting an open outcry broker there too, or I may buy a seat next week. If I get the seat, I'll hook you up with the lowest commission around. I want to have charter members. Give them the best deal in the business.
yeah, you could just short the hell out of the cap markets. We're totally gonna crash. But guys, let's not mess up our man's plans. He want to trade commodities, don't set him off of course.
curious? do you know anything about this group? they cover all the commodities markets for great rates?
Try 5perside.com Their cost for pit traded contracts is hmm... $5 per side. Reitberg, what do you mean by charter members? I'd like to trade pit traded options but to do it the standard way I have to call a desk they have to call the floor, get a nominal 2 sided mkt , call go to the order desk, call me up 10 minutes later. By then mkt moved. My wish list is to have an acct w/ a regular FCM, call a $2 broker, pay him $2 to execute and give up the trade to my clearin firm. Is that doable? Thanks
i am not sure if what worked for me then is viable now. but leasing or buying a seat and having a "nominee" on the floor to excecute your trades may be the most efficeint way to do what you want. i believe seat leases are very cheap now on most exchanges. but compensting a nominee is going to cost you also. so it depends on how much trading you are really considering doing. when i did it, we (a corporation) had seats on several exchanges. we paid the nominees a nominal salary. plus a percentage of profits. this worked out well, for obvious reasons. also, if the nominee could get a better price than what we asked of him, he would get the lion's share of that difference, so there was more incentive still. if you do not have the capital to meet exchange requirements, you may want to consider forming a partnership with other traders that wish to do what you want. clearing costs are very low when you are a member. when i was a member, my clearing costs were actually higher then than what i pay for commissions now on a retail basis. so i guess everything has gone down as far as expenses due to electronic trading and more competition. again, it has been a while since i was doing this kind of trading, and i am sure a lot of changes have occured. but it is only a matter of making some phone calls to the exchanges and to a clearing firm (like refco, spear leeds, etc....i would call the exchange first and ask who your best bets for clearing would be). you will need to make a coherent list of questions and take notes while you are on the phone. but by the end of the day, you will know more than you could possibly hope to learn by asking on this forum forever. take a shot and pick up the phone. you will be amazed at what you can learn. BTW, when I did just this, the clearing firm arranged for me to interview potential nominees. they know who is available, who is looking for new opportunities, and who is qualified. i ended up with a guy that had tried to trade his own account (he was too young and undercapitalized), lost enough so he did not have the min. required capital, and then worked for the clearing firm in their risk department. he was a great guy to have. he understood all the risk requirements, (how to figure haircut, how to hedge whatever positions we were in, etc.). he was young and eager and did a great job. and i got to just sit upstairs and call my trades down to him. it was well worth giving up what we paid him. he knew from a few years experience enough to save me what i would have ended up paying (losing) to gain the knowledge. it was a solid investment. and i think the only intelligent way to do it. the cost of learning from your mistakes is always going to be more expensive than sharing your profits with an experienced floor trader. i can say for certain that if i were interested in trading futures full time, this is exactly what i would do. as it is, i am trading equities, and there is no apparent benefit (that I can see) to not just pay my penny a share and be flat at the end of the day. and have my time as my own. trading as a member is (or should be) a full time endeavor. good luck, and i hope this helps. in any event, making those phone calls will cost you virtually nothing, and make you infinitely more knowledgeable in a day than you could possibly get with answers here. and all the misinformation mixed with the good info. no matter what, you will have no downside (other than what it costs for a few phone calls...certainly less than one losing trade in anything at any size). good luck, Peace rs7 PS: All this time element completely disappears when you have your own guy on the floor:
rs7Thanks for taking the time to reply. I did find out that fcstone will for the right account opening amt (> 50K) and considerable experience will let traders call the booth directly bypassing the "order" desk. Thanks again