I'm UK based and looking for advice on which broker/clearing firm to sign up with for trading primarily CL and GC. I only use Sierra Chart and plan to use their Teton order routing with Denali data feed so the broker/clearing firm must be compatible. My understanding is that some US firms allow GBP deposits to prevent clients from being stung with FX fees. Clearly this would be the route to take unless there are any UK based brokers that I am unaware of. Does anyone have any experience with this type of arrangement?
I have been investing for 15 years and trading on and off for 10 years with relatively small spread betting accounts. I intend to deposit £35-40k for my futures trading.
Any advice much appreciated.
Thanks
Rich
The following user says Thank You to Boovmeister for this post:
Scroll down to Setup Instructions and this is the list:
To be able to use this service, you need to have a live trading account with one of the following clearing firms or one of their Introducing Brokers:
Stage 5 Trading (broker)
Edge Clear (broker)
Ironbeam (Clearing firm.)
Trade Pro Futures (broker)
AGN Futures (broker)
Canon Trading (broker)
Sweet Futures (broker)
DeepDiscountTrading (broker)
Advantage Futures (Clearing firm)
Dorman Trading (Clearing firm)
Phillip Capital (Clearing firm)
There may be others at a later time, but this is it today, apparently.
No idea about their policies on UK accounts, but this is a start.
Bob.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
The products you're looking to trade are margined in USD so you wouldn't be able to trade them in a GBP account. Most FCM's don't charge a conversion fee when foreign funds are received, so your best option is to wire funds from your GBP account and ask your bank not to convert the funds on their end, let the FCM do that. We have lots of UK-based traders on the Teton feed.
Feel free to reach out with any questions. (312) 765 7228. There is a substantial risk of loss in trading futures and options. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. Full Details.
We have Teton/Sierra and support many UK based traders. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions.
Feel free to reach out with any questions. (312) 765 7228. There is a substantial risk of loss in trading futures and options. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. Full Details.
Would be interested to see what you can find.
I had real problems finding a broker last year as many of them were based in the USA and in order to wire funds they all had to go through the banks of their cleaners. What this meant in effect was that there were about 3 different banks/layers to get through and due to the somewhat luddite wiring practises, my UK based bank couldn't wire the funds over as it was one stage too many for them to handle.
If you do find a broker you like then check their funding instructions carefully then check with your bank (a rather frustrating process) to see if they can wire the funds.
I also spoke to RJ O'Brien and my memory is hazy but they, and others, have some hidden fx charges which put me off.
I should also add that the process of wiring large amounts of money does not seem to be a great idea. One mistake and it's gone, and it's such a convoluted/slow process that I was very unhappy about how robust this payment system is.
Combined with the fact that the withdrawal process itself is convoluted. It's not like doing a quick bank transfer, and if your broker was in trouble and you tried to withdraw funds then it would be very slow indeed, and also somewhat discretionary in comparison to an automated payment/transfer system.
WhatI ended up doing wad continuing to use Sierra Charts but then subscribe to Prorealtime Charts and I trade off these via Interactive Brokers UK. You still get gains/losses in the base currency of what you're trading (US $ and ? For GC) but they have a simple and cheap conversion system that you can use daily/weekly/whenever you want.
Hope that helps and please let me know what you find out.
I can recommend speaking to Johann at PRT to discuss things (you open an account with them first and they are your introducing entity to Interactive Brokers).
