Ron, the DeCarly charged $7 for round trip for selling options, is that right? what about their margin?
for example, if I want to sell Sep 12,2014 1850 put (bid 1.7, ask 1.9, alpha=0.04), IM is 6685, MM is 5348 at IB.
since I am familiar with ES, I may focus on ES option selling for now. Commodity trading is very new to me.

Do you know anybody here focusing on selling ES options? thanks!

On top of commissions and exchange fees, DeCarley is also charging an additional 0.75 cents (1.5 RT) fee. This was not disclosed to me when I opened an account with them. Otherwise service is good if not on the expensive side.

I have found after years of chasing the lowest cost trading fees that it wasn't worth chasing the lowest dollar. Good customer service is worth the couple of extra bucks more.

If you calculate you ROI with a $2 higher cost it hardly changes the ROI as long as you sold the option for above $50. Maybe 0.1%.

Ron, the DeCarly charged $7 for round trip for selling options

Please use the DeCarley broker thread to ask broker questions or read/post reviews:

Carley Garner / DeCarleyTrading.com / CarleyGarnerTrading.com Hi guys, Does anyone have any experiences to share about Carley Garner or her products and services? I am doing some research before inviting her on to do a webinar on futures.io (formerly BMT). Mike

Or to ask Carley a question about anything options/trading related used the AMA thread:

DeCarley Trading's Carley Garner (Senior Strategist/Broker) - Ask Me Anything (AMA) redirect

Mike

I guess I am on a deserted island. Anybody know a place that discusses selling options on futures?

I have been using Interactive Brokers to sell options on futures since 2003. But I am going to switch over to Options Express soon. As Ron99 said in an earlier post, he checked out TOS and it is not friendly to options sellers.

For the past week I have been comparing IB with OX. Hands down IB has the better overall trading platform and lowest commissions, I pay under $3 for each option traded. But for the purpose of selling far OTM options, I would use OX because the margin requirements are as close to SPAN as you can find. If you scroll back and read this post, me and Ron99 have found that at times the margin requirements at IB can be more than 600% higher compared to OX. For example, I currently have an April CL strangle for three options at 70 Puts and 105 Calls. My initial margin requirement at IB is close to $15,000 whereas with XO, my margin would be about $7,600. Huge difference! I can use the extra margin to place additional positions!

Last week I called OX and told them how cheap my commissions were at IB, after some back and forth negotiating, OX gave me a rate of $3.99 per option with no minimum trade quotas. To me, this is great because I can easily make up for the difference in commissions by being able to trade twice the size I normally do at IB.

ddu, OX is 3.50 per half turn for all traders unless you have traded with them for years and have a large balance. But OX is not SPAN minimum margin in all cases.

ddu, OX is 3.50 per half turn for all traders unless you have traded with them for years and have a large balance. But OX is not SPAN minimum margin in all cases.