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You still can take long positions in inverse and leveraged ETF/ETNs in IRA accounts. You just cannot short sell individual stocks or ETF/ETN. Sure, you can take short positions in futures without any problem.
I am also using Midland for past few years, great experience so far. When I spoke to my Tradestation Rep, he recommended it to me as they seem to work pretty well with Tradestation.
Per IB, accounts (including IRA accounts) at IB are protected by SIPC, which means the cash in each account has an insurance up to $250k. In addition, IB bought insurance from a private insurance company which covers cash per account up to $900k (with a firm-wide limit of $150 million).
IB's initial margin requirement for trading futures in IRA accounts is currently 3 times the overnight initial margin requirement for regular accounts. For example, to buy/sell one ES contract in an IRA account at IB currently, one would need to have at least $14,431.20 of cash in his account. If you need very high leverage, then it would not be a good choice for you. But if you don't trade with very high leverage, this requirement would be acceptable. Personally I am okay with IB's margin requirement.
With respect to custodian for IRA accounts, I would say IB is one of the most convenient and most economical choices. It's just like opening a regular account, you don't need to do any additional paperwork to open the IRA account. IB automatically takes care of the IRA custodian for you. They only charges $30 per year.
Hope the above answers all your questions.
bmfan
Disclaimer: I don't have any financial interest in IB, nor will I receive any benefit by referring clients to them. I am just a tiny client of them for a few years and would like to share my personal experience with other traders here.
have never had a SD IRA so all this stuff helps. had a SD 401k where could never short like you said....but was on vxz at turns or when had hedges. only way i knew to protect my longs.
well thnx....the protection on the funds is good. may well decide to do a half and half. what i also gathered from some custodians was if the funds were fully allocated to the broker it was whatever protection broker offered....else some of them had the SIPC/FDIC insurance as you suggested.
trick in this whole thing is how to rollover half funds from older 401k to one custodian and the other half to another....well guess it should be possible.
It's definitely doable. And that's what I did. As far as I know, there is no restrictions on how many IRA accounts an old 401k account can rollover into.
