CQG has a page full of FCMs. I called a few only to find excessive fees.
Has anyone contacted many of those to get an idea how their commissions and fees compare to, for example, Interactive Brokers, especially at the 1000 - 5000 contract/month level?
CQG Integrated client has the potential to save thousands, but not if the FCM is way more expensive than IB.
The following user says Thank You to oceanbreeze for this post:
To my knowledge, all of these will serve retail (non-exchange member) accounts either directly or through introducing brokers (IB). Sometimes you can get a better deal through the IB.
ADM Investors / large, sound. They do a lot of commercial business. Their IBs might handle individual trader accounts.
Advantage / definitely check here. Known for low rates, good service for higher volume accounts.
AMP
Crossland / look up Deep Discount Brokerage, an IB. I think there's a recent acquisition (Wedbush?) here.
Dorman
Knight Capital
Phillip Futures
Rosenthal Collins / look up Cannon Trading, an IB (Cannon has a representative that posts to this site)
Vision is still opening accounts. Where did you get your facts that Vision does not open accounts?
Some of the FCMs above had regulatory issues at some point as well.
We can offer CQG Q Trader without any problems.
Matt
Trading futures and options involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. You may lose more than your initial investment. All posts are opinions and do not claim to be facts. Please conduct your own due diligence. Use only Risk capital when trading Futures.
1 800 771 6748 local 561 367 8686 email support@OptimusFutures.com
Please note the use of "I think" and the use of "may."
The Vision issue was discussed a couple of months ago on this site. At that time, they were going to "close" and then rename themselves or something like that. I'm not in the brokerage business so I don't know how it turned out or is turning out.
The advice stands: People should check out NFA BASIC as well as the FCM capital reports/excess capital ratios and decide for themselves if they want to do business with firm XYZ.
Yes, they should. But in my humble opinion stating that they no longer accept accounts using "may" and "I think" does "excuse" you. You made statement and instead you could have simply asked
In the next few days, I will publish here the current status.
I assure you that we open accounts as usual for all trading platforms.
Matt
Trading futures and options involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. You may lose more than your initial investment. All posts are opinions and do not claim to be facts. Please conduct your own due diligence. Use only Risk capital when trading Futures.
1 800 771 6748 local 561 367 8686 email support@OptimusFutures.com
I'm not doing a deep-dive research project for the guy. He asked if someone had a way to whittle down the list and I provided some names that serve independent traders. I made sure to use qualifiers when I wasn't sure about something.
You seem like a hard-working, customer-focused entrepreneur. I don't think I've ever read anything but praise about your business on this site. But the fact is that Vision had a serious oversight issue (so have others), and I don't envy your having to explain the situation to customers and prospects.
So, please don't shoot the messenger.
The following user says Thank You to CafeGrande for this post:
I appreciate the kind words about our work ethic.
It had nothing with us, and indeed it affected us tremendously.
Matt
Trading futures and options involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. You may lose more than your initial investment. All posts are opinions and do not claim to be facts. Please conduct your own due diligence. Use only Risk capital when trading Futures.
1 800 771 6748 local 561 367 8686 email support@OptimusFutures.com
From the tone of your post, you're probably already aware, but just sharing so others know because there are other numbers being advertised and I want to be fair to the users and other FCMs/IBs. The marginal cost for your FCM to execute a retail order is zero above some very small threshold. After all, how many hours do you actually spend talking to your reps at the FCM/IB and how much counterparty risk are they taking up especially if you're executing via a tried-and-tested software provider, e.g. CQG, TT etc.? This threshold is very small. So you have every right to shop around and not get fleeced.
As a non-member, I'd say you should expect no more than $2.82 per ES round trip all-in (including exchange, FCM commission and NFA fee) i.e. $0.25 FCM commission up to 10,000 contracts per month. Let me know if you need specific names.
It's only when you shift from a retail account to a bulge-bracket bank's FCM group within that ($0, $0.25] interval when it gets expensive and the fees take longer to go down, because the multiple reps (credit/risk, onboarding, sales) assigned to you and the 2-4 people monitoring your positions actually each earn $250k to $1.2m all-in compensation per year, and you're actually, truly, not worth their business if you're not paying certain fees at minimum.
The following 5 users say Thank You to artemiso for this post:
My bad, I quoted @CafeGrande without explaining - it's a good list, there's a handful on that list that would be able to go down under the number I suggested without making negotiations difficult for you.
IB is reliable.
I don't know if I have had IB speed issues (tick here tick there) because I have no proper way to compare IB to CQG for example.
IB and Tradestation are both reliable and quick (in my limited experience), just trying to make sure that I have data and platform in the right range considering my volume level, however meagre.
The following user says Thank You to oceanbreeze for this post:
That's a good point. I am not having any issues with Tradestation or IB/Ninja or IB/Sierra, and all's well with my performance.
It does not appear that a high percentage of people in this forum use Tradestation. There are probably good reasons for that. If I could get a sample of those reasons, that would be great.
Using IB connected to Sierra or Ninja using third party data seems cobbled together, more to go wrong, compared to an all-in-one like CQG or Tradestation for that matter.
I think CQG turns out to be not too much more expensive than Tradestastion. Is that right?
What turns people off Tradestation?
If CQG is in a different league than Tradestation, why is that?
I don't imagine than an almost imperceptible difference in order routing and data speed is going to improve my returns.
That said, I like to have the right equipment, doesn't have to be perfect, just near enough optimal.
I also noticed the lack of TS users. Most of them are on Tradestation's very own forum.
futures.io (formerly BMT) is primarily NT users. And if you check the breadth and usability of the NT forum, it probably shows why users have gravitated towards futures.io (formerly BMT).
I like IB/NT with IQFeed, just seems strange to have to use third party front end and third party data to trade with IB.
If you code well enough (it's called EasyLanguage for a reason), it's easy to monitor a handful of futures symbols from Radarscreen. You can code your own signals letting you know where to look. All the time good traders spend waiting for good signals may be better spent executing a good signal on another symbol. That also reduces the tendency to see things that aren't there, to force trades. There are lots of symbols that offer ideal conditions throughout the day. Why stare at just one?
Anyway, with the three moving parts of IB NT and IQFeed, has anyone had any problems, such a freeze ups, trades not going through to IB, etc?
Has anyone had any major problems with Tradestation? Ghostly quiet is you ask that in the Tradestation forum!
