waggie, this is a deal for elite guys. it may be different. i am capable of looking on their site. thanks for your guidence though. and my question remains.
Hey Mark, This sounds like a competitive offer. Is there something we can do in terms of flexibility (ie. giving us more time to transfer funds, etc.) I personally would like to demo the platform, as I did with ffasttrade before making a decision, despite the zealous comments of one of the writers (Lady's Man) on your last offer's thread. Plus, I too would appreciate the terms of the offer (ie. min opening requirement, intraday margin). In any case, I do want to say thank you for coming through with a real competitive offer. You definitely showed some true class here.
I think it's negotiable based on what your commision is, otherwise many smaller traders didn't have to move to future trading because of PDT rule, if they had to pay a minimum of 20k to use top on line platforms.
Hey guys, slow down, its year end and everybody should know by now that commissions at CME (maybe at other exchanges) will be lowered. Even lowering clearing fees is being discussed. No wonder the first brokerages are stepping in to steal customers from IB and the like who still go with 4.80 RT for futures. In my opinion everybody can just wait and see how commissions will drop further. There is no need to hurry. Remember trading rule #1: Conservation of trading capital. If you feel pushed or dont know the trading platform blindly then slow it down and wait. Matt
I want to rate Interactive Brokers (IB) but cannot as I have not posted 30 replies within ET yet. I was a very satisfied customer until recently. But what happened within the last couple months really drove me nuts and I am not considering switching to another futures brokerage (will take the time though to find the best fit> see previous post ;-) Now, every couple days the TWS (execution platform of IB) is crashing and one can do nothing but wait. It happened to me that just at the time I entered my futures trade (a long) and wanted to set a stop loss, but the platform crashed and I could not enter the stop anymore. Surely, I had a backup broker and went short the same no. of contracts. But I wanted to get out nonethless and called up IB to have my positions cleaned out. But now it comes: I WAITED 5 LONG MINUTES to even get a guy on the phone. He asked me for the Account No. and DOB and stuff, I gave it to him and asked him to please hurry as the market was dropping sharply. But he did not listen and asked me for about 4 or 5 (I do not remember exactly) identifications in order to make sure it was really me who called in. I could not believe it. The Platform crashed several times (sometimes even within a single week) but it was the first time I really called in the order desk. They even wanted to charge me USD 30 for this phoned-in order and I had to debate with them that I was not willing to pay for it as the crash was a fault on IB's side. This gave me the creeps and was the point at which I decided to close down futures trading with IB. I will move all my funds away from IB and am currently considering another broker. Just wanted to let you guys know that. I would not have freaked out if I traded 1 or 2 contracts but I traded 35 contracts ES at that time. What I criticize is not that a system can fail from time to time but that IB does not have their acts together in at least serving clients through the order desk when the systems crash. I am aware that many must have called in but this is, in my opinion no excuse. HIRE more guys at the trading desk or get your systems running ALL THE TIME. This is what a paying customer can expect at least!!! I explicitely refer her to Global FUtures, Advanced Futures, and Velocity Futures. Call in those guys or use X-Trader or J-Trader and you guys know what I mean. All three of them answer phone within seconds. I hope this will help in the decision process for some looking for a new broker. IB was great commission wise butt they now got quite decent competition because of great trading systems such as X-trader and J-Trader. I am very upset at IB as they come up with excuses all the times instead of recognizing a problem. This is now going on for months and getting worse week by week (referring to platform crashes). Matt
Just curious how many round turns you do a day at 35 a crack? If you only do 2 a day you could easily qualify for lower rates at other brokers where phone service has never been a question. I think you could have easily been saving .5-.8 a contract rt. I will throw out, in somewhat fairness to IB ( since I overall haven't been a big fan) that I do appreciate the sweep of funds to the equity side to earn interest on it all without having to deal with t-bond baloney.
Tango, you are right IB offers some nice features. Also think about the security you got. Basically, by day's end all funds are sweeped into the security account so even if you trade futures the funds are insured overnight. But what does this all do good if your systems fail while trading. I have informed myself, X-Trader (TT Technologies) and J-Trader (Patsystems) are stable like nothing else. IB's system suck in comparison to that. No problem for investors, or non-daytraders, but when you trade futures >10 contracts a trade then forget about IB in my opinion. Matt
Would be nice if AF was a little more explicit about non ES/NQ commission rates. Especially Eurex: Bund, DAX, EuroStoxx and LIFFE: FTSE, Euribor... Perhaps they could post base rates here? Q1