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Has anyone heard of a broker that offers reduced margin requirements when doing futures pairs or spreads? I wanted to go long /RBH7 (RBOB Gas) and Short /CLH7 without having to pay full margin on both sides. I ended up putting the trade on using ETF's but really missed out on the leverage of futures. Thanks you any help.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
I think it would be difficult to calculate any compensation on this pair, as it are two different instruments.
Within the same instrument it is already not easy.
This is not a timely response but you can find the info you're looking for at https://www.rjobrien.com/tools/margins. Search the NYMEX intercommodity spreads.
Most FCMs will provide proper SPAN margin credits (which are all on the CME website, although you need to hunt around a bit for them). Advantage, Crossland, RJ O'Brien, Wedbush and AMP come to mind. There are also many introducing brokers that work with these FCMs that may be able to provide lower commissions. Optimus and Deep Discount Trading are two off the top of my head.
PM with any questions about Cannon Trading (800) 454-9572 (310) 859-9572. Trading commodity futures, forex and options involves substantial risk of loss. The recommendations contained in this post are of opinion only and do not guarantee any profits. These are risky markets and only risk capital should be used. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.
Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
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Old post I know, but this is called a Gasoline Crack Spread, or a RBOB crack. It is tradeable on Globex (aka NYMEX/CME) as a spread with no leg risk.
Since CL is a land locked Oklahoma crude, while RBOB is a New York Harbor ("NYH") delivered Gasoline Feedstock contact, some people look at Brent-RBOB cracks as well as/instead of CL/RBOB cracks. These cracks are offered on both Globex and ICE, but the limited liquidity they have seems to be on ICE. Unfortunately RBOB appears to be a dying contract in general.
My first reaction was $3137 implies that the crack is more volatile than crude outright, which as volatile as RBOB has been, seems illogical. So I checked the CME website, which unless I'm missing something implies a lot less.
Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,049 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,386
Thanks Received: 10,206
As @drm7 said most good FCMs will provide proper SPAN margin credits. While I have no experience with ThinkorSwim or Ameritrade I would agree that based upon my limited experience with Interactive Brokers they would not be a good choice.
The potential problem you may encounter is that they type of broker that offers this is also the type of broker that doesn't have their own free software, and the guys with the free software probably don't offer this.
My primary broker Advantage Futures offers SPAN margining but they are probably not the best odd-lot retail trader option.
Tradestation would not be a good option as they are very 'continuous contract' centric and make it very difficult to roll @ES contracts never mind trade crack spreads.
I have no idea where Ninja Trader are this spectrum.
I use TOS(TD Ameritrade) for my calendar spreads only(you can't trade intermarket spreads with TOS). I find that their span margins are right on par with the exchange span margins.
So true, I've lost count on how many IB's I called that do not offer calendar spreads let alone intermarket spread trading.
It seems everything these days is all about day trading. No love for spread trading!
