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Houston TX
Legendary Market Wizard
Experience: Advanced
Platform: TT and Stellar
Broker: Advantage Futures
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: 4,388
Thanks Received: 10,207
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The cost to trade futures is made up of three major components.- Exchange Fees
- NFA Fees
- Broker / FCM / Software / Data Fees
In its simplest form Exchange Fees are the same for everybody. (In reality its more complex than this as there are exchange memberships and discount programs that can give you a discount but if your using a retail broker then this probably doesn't apply to you). So it doesn't matter which broker you use the exchange fee will be the same. (Note in some cases the exchange splits this between what they call an exchange fee and a clearing fee - doesn't really matter though, still just the same thing).
NFA Fees are 2c for non-members and 0c for members. So I have a NYMEX seat so If I'm trading Crude/CL I don't pay an NFA fee. I don't have a CME seat though so if trading S&P500/ES I do pay 2c.
Where the difference comes in is with the Broker / FCM / Software / Data Fees. Different brokers charge different things. Some software has a routing fee.
Answering your question specifically I think your $1.25 is wrong. For ES the CME exchange fee for non-members trading outrights is $1.28 and the NFA fee for non-members is $0.02 which is probably why Tradestation quote $1.30. In reality Tradestation are then going to charge you 'their' fee on top of that.
see exchanges fees at https://www.cmegroup.com/company/clearing-fees.html
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