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The futures have more advantages than the ETFs in my mind as well but it depends what you are trying to do. With ES there is such high volume on the bid and ask that it's tough to get executed some times so I end up doing market orders. The volumes on the SPY bid/ask are smaller. Also, when...

I get the impression that presently when you buy or sell SSFs the market maker just trades an offsetting position in the actual security. That is, if you sell a contract of 100 shares there will be a corresponding purchase of the actual 100 shares. So you're just paying someone else for their...

I generally haven't had any problem shorting stock in my IB account but I've seen posts on this message board complaining about what happens when you are short and availability dries up. It has been reported that if IB no longer can short the stock (e.g. someone holding it long sells), the...

I have mixed feelings about this legislation. On the negative side, it means companies likely aren't adequately funding their pension plans and increases the likelihood that taxpayers will have to bail the plans out. On the other hand, without the legislation, some companies would terminate...

Seems like a perfect scenario right now for the whole oil patch. Crude at 13 year highs, rig counts up, daily rates up. From a fundamental perspective, it isn't likely to get any better and stock prices reflect perfection. I expect a broad decline in stocks like ESV, NE, RDC, and SII.

Here's one reason to not use SMART routing. I generally don't use it when I am placing an order for an NYSE stock. With SMART routing, I won't get any price improvement if IB does not route the order to NYSE. If it is routed to NYSE, I get price improvement perhaps 5%+ of the time. So I...

I live in South Florida where housing prices have been rising rapidly the past few years. But up state, and in particular, in land, there are nice pieces of property available at very reasonable prices. Overall the cost of living in Florida is moderate. Certainly it's cheaper in Texas and...

I've had this happen with new issues. Sometimes it isn't set up in Trader Workstation until someone asks for it. They also change symbols when a preferred stock is recalled and one time inadvertantly changed the symbol of the underlying common stock instead. This caused an execution of an...

Mine was available over the weekend and I've printed it out. They're probably rolling it out over a few days.

I had the problem before with the stand alone version. But because I had the web version as a backup, I was able to copy the page file over from its directory.

How are futures trades reported on your tax return? Is it done on Schedule D or another form? As an example, bought 1 ES for 1000 and sell it for 1100. Total profit is $5000 (100 point difference x $50/point). Are the proceeds from the sale just the $5000 (ignoring commissions) or do you...

There are a few journal articles that you can access through the web that will get you started. I remember a couple in Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities in particular. Go to their site and do a search.

How are you routing the order? For example, if you place a limit order to sell at the bid and route the order to AMEX, IB's software isn't going to have anything to do with whether or not the order is executed. They will send the order to AMEX and they'll execute it at the bid if no uptick is...

Has anyone tried pairs trading using single stock futures?

You can have no opinion on the market direction and still earn money with a market neutral strategy.

Since they only have 400+ employees (or maybe it was 600+), billions in bonuses sounds a tad high. I did see that they donated a few milllion $ to Vanderbilt University so they must be doing well. But it's privately held.

Good questions. In reality I think the risk is more with unauthorized account trading then with removal of cash. All brokers I know send confirmations of bank account and address changes to your old contact information which gives you time to react. I use IB and they now offer a device that...

There's no such thing as a free lunch. If IB or ET offered group health insurance, who would use it? Mostly those who are currently not able to get affordable individual coverage due to pre-existing conditions or who have lousy individual policies. Anyone already in a good group plan would be...

C went ex-dividend on January 29. That is, if you owned the stock at end of day on January 28, you will receive the $0.40/share dividend. If you bought it on January 29, you will not receive this dividend.

On what network did you see this infomercial?