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I trade Qm via IB. No problem during the trasition. If you want to find out how many people on ET trade QM, you may want to contract a poll.

I assume you don't want to fork the $500 to own the SPAN calculator from CME. IB, for example, have a "check margin" feature you can apply to an order before you submit it.

milstar, I respect the fact that English is not your first language. It's not mine either, but it's very hard to understand your statements or questions. Also from your post it seems that you never traded before. What "legal point of view"? What "conflict with broker"? Do you...

Guys, I assume you understand that 15,000 options a day is nothing. This number has to be divided across all strikes and all expirations, CALLs and PUTs. Without checking, i'm sure it's way over 100 options. Trading in ES options, now better than ever before, is still very limited. SPX...

Isn't OIH an ETF? Are the others actual indices? If that's the case, I read interpretation of the tax law that claims that options on wide-based indices are treated as 1256 contracts and options on ETF are not. The source is Greentax.com This whole issue is not carved in stone and is open...

ADLE, I suggest you use technical stops on the underlying stock. When you go long the option, decide at which stock level you'll close out the option (both stop-loss and profit target). You should also use some time rule. If after X days, the stock doesn't move in your favor, close out the...

Vedanta, Regarding commodities, IB lets you trade options on debt (bonds/notes) and Eurodollars. The strategy is called a "short strangle". The margin is worst case of either PUTs or CALLs plus the premium of the other side, but look at IB site for accurate definition.

Few comments: When you say you have 50% invested in these naked PUTs, I hope you mean that your margin requirement is 50% of your capital. I would add a money management rule that you should never exceed 80-90% of your capital in margin. You should plan your exposure such that this limit...

Why even consider this? There are so many reputable on-line brokers that will let you trade options on heating oil, or any other tradable vehicle. Even if it was legitmate (I doubt it), I don'y see any reason to take this risk...

I also keep accounts with IB and TS. I have 95% of my trading activity with IB and use TS mainly for charting and strategy. I trade with TS just enough to avoid fees. TS is a great platform for charting (the best, IMHO), but they have a lot to learn as brokers. IB is a better broker in almost...

andysmith, Don't confuse between tax treatment and margin rules. these are not necessarily related. SPX options have margin rules according to reg T., but they are still regarded as section 1256 contracts for tax purposes.

I cannot understand the fixation of the market on the weather. The coming storm is never going to strengthen to Hurricane and is not coming anywhere close to the gulf where to rigs are!

From classical technical analysis perspective: The breakout from the $62 level was expected, after a huge ascending triangle. The breakout went up roughly the size of the preceding range (56.5 - 62]. The recent sharp sell off to 62.2 (BTW, exact match with July's high) was a bearish sign...

I trade mostly SPX options, but recently started ES options (both using IB). My observations: 1. ES has much less volume, but reasonable liquidity. (big and steady bid/ask) 2. The bid/ask spreads are similar, but while in SPX there are many trades in the middle, this is not the case with ES...

ktm, Could you provide a pointer to the part that deals with section 1256? I assume that wide-based indices are section 1256 contracts already and I'm interested in any new developments in this area. Thanks.

You can do everything you mentioned with Excel, besides SPAN margin. This one, you must buy from CME ($500 if I remember correctly). IB has a DDE API to excel. I don't know if you can integrate SPAN with Excel.

Thanks for bringing this article. It could be very nice to have SPAN margin system applied to stock futures and stock/index options...still in our lifetime

This is not cool! I'm full time, trading is my only income. Married with kids. I trade more than a year and more capital than you mentioned, but I don't need to prove anything, not to you and not to anybody else. I like the way ET forums are organized, by subject. There are many good...