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If you lease a seat, do you still get 60/40 long term/short term capital gains split? Leasing a seat may make trading your profession and subject you to ordinary income tax on trading gains as well as FICO tax at self employment rates. Not sure. Just something to watch out for.

I keep track of my individual trades on an Excel spreadsheet. But let's say you don't do that. If you just use IB's reported transactions, your Schedule D totals will still tie to broker reported 1099 proceeds and this wouldn't give the IRS a basis to question your return. If they did wade...

Direct access platforms provide this capability. I use IB's TWS. One click sets up the buy or sell order for a pre-specified quantity (e.g. 100 or 1000 shares). Then, using "hot keys", I can transmit the order witha single key stroke. From deciding to buy, going through the above process and...

They are a single liquidity provider. IB, as an example, typically has 6 to 10 for major pairs. You can view market depth and see the vrange of spreads. I don't see how DBFX alone can be competitive against brokers that have many liquidity providers.

I'm going to take a more optimistic view of what's to come. Remember the proposed transaction tax from a few months back? Now you don't hear anything about it. It went away because common sense prevailed. I'm expecting the same here. The 1.5:1 leverage is such a change from current...

I was providing a general response and hadn't considered the specific dates in your example. My point is, look at the cash flow from your purchase based on the settlement date. If you opened your position on Friday, June 5, it will settle on Tuesday, June 9. You will not see any interest...

At the end of each day (5pm for forex), you have positions (positive or negative) in each currency. For a currency with a positive balance, you will potentially be paid interest. For a currency with a negative balance, you will be charged margin interest. So, if you buy 1,000,000 Euro...

I had the same problem when I first set up QuoteTracker. I don't have access to TWS at the moment so can't be specific about what you need to do. But in the TWS setup there's a box you need to click to allow data export. Keep checking all of the various configuration screens in TWS and...

Although shown on IDEALPRO, they might not have any market makers lined up in these currencies. I've periodically checked USD against the SGD without luck. Check different times of day as some (e.g. NZD.USD) are not available around the clock. Otherwise, send an e-mail to IB and eventually...

I agree. I have simple strategies as well. They work for a while and then peter out. Take what the market gives you. By the way, monkey's throwing darts beat 75% of fund managers but that doesn't shut down the mutual fund business.

I think it's like buying a lottery ticket right now. But if you want to go ahead, the easiest to acquire are those sold as preferred stock. There are several such as XGM which is selling for $1.14 (versus $25 par, so about 4 cents on the dollar). The ones that are GMAC, like HGM, will sell...

Yes. For a trade where you've sold USD for JPY, you can either 1)back calculate how many USD you have to buy to close out your JPY position at your limit price, 2) close out the risidual amount in a separate IDEAL transaction from time to time, or 3) use Button Trader software referenced on...

Ordinarily you would not need to have JPY in your account to undertake this transaction. With a margin account, IB would automatically loan you JPY. But I guess you can't have an IRA margin account with IB. In any case, you can buy JPY in your account. The symbol in TWS is USD.JPY and you...

Brokers can establish margin requirements stricter than Fed.

Many brokers provide nothing for Fx trades. They don't even report it on a 1099 form. You need to track it yourselves and report on your return. Individual transactions do not need to be reported. Just the totals like futures.

It is actually two trades since the coding for a short sale has to be different. But agree with above comment that IB handles as a single trade for commission purposes.

Your account value, margin and buying power are based on the value of your securities in your base currency. If you buy GBP denominated bonds from a USD account, then yes, your account will fluctuate due to exchange rate differencies. However, the margin requirement for such a security is...

You can buy corporate bonds at IB but I've found thru trial and error that many issues aren't available. This is either due to lack of liquidity or some other factor that results in IB not being able to handle the trade. But usually I've been able to find some other bond with similar...

Now if IB's developers could somehow show us our future trade executions, they would really be on to something.

IB lists themselves as a liquidity provider so they can match trades between IB's customers. Their commission is 0.2 pips each way with a minimum commission of $2.50. For USD accounts, the commission is calculated in the buying currency and immediately converted to USD at current rate.