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I would first respectfully suggest that you do a LOT more research on options before you jump in, they are far more complex than they might first appear. For example, option margin is calculated with an algorithm called SPAN (Standard Portfolio Analysis of risk) which takes into account relative...

If this is for a dissertation, then of course you will be happy (and required by both Stanford and Stamford Universities, as well as APA and every other acreditation body) to provide us as research subjects (yes, even anonymous and unwitting ones), with the faculty contact information for your...

You're right, it is hard, and drawdowns will happen. But if you have a system that you are confident in, initially, trade small enough (maybe one-lot minis, in any case WAY smaller than whatever you think you "should") so that you can afford to stick to it regardless, without financial pressure...

Contrary to common opinion, much of off-exchange forex trading IS regulated, and in those cases, there are standards for disclosure, client suitability, etc. This may be true if the person involved has ANY ties to a registered broker-dealer (many exclusively forex firms do, for hedging purposes...

If you did not sign any sort of agreement with him (not the account agreement or power of attorney, but a management agreement with HIM) and he is registered in any capacity, and you report this to the NFA or NASD as appropriate, he will lose his registration, and probably worse. The fact that...

Get out now. $300/day consistently from a $10,000 account? If he could really do that, he would be BY FAR the most sucessful trader/financier in the world, and certainly wouldn't need or want to talk to you. Do the math, modestly compound those returns and extrapolate them out a few years, and...

You can use your personal trades as long as they are clearly identified in your disclosure document as proprietary trading, and as long as the strategy is essentially identical to what you are doing in the CTA. What gets posted on sites like Autumngold are the returns in your DD, so it is really...

Thanks for the current figure, it does change a bit from time to time with the "fortunes" of the NFA. Jessie

You can absolutely do your own DD, I did and I know others who have as well. The NFA compliance people will pretty much walk you through it if you ask them to, and will review everything you want to put in or leave out. I have found them to be really helpful and willing to spend as much time as...

Thanks, one other thing that I thought of that I thought I'd pass along is that it is worth keeping in mind that EVERYONE is looking for good money managers and the next great CTA, and so I found that it was actually very easy for me to get in to see decision makers that had money to allocate...

Re. the question about non-correlation with other asset classes, it's not even necessarily a quantifiable thing (although you certainly can do so with a simple correlation coefficient). It is often done in a simply intuitive manner. Managers in many cases are looking for people who can smooth...

One thing that did help me was that my track record was similar to what funds & IB's were looking for. First, I would disagree that there are a lot of people with a 5 year track record of 30%/year. That would be an amazing record, and that alone would easily land you in the Futures Magazine...

Good advice, especially about scaleability and edge. I was initially surprised at how many institutional managers wanted to know exactly what I did, assuming that my "proprietary" methods were my business. The truth is that they would rather have me do it (and pay me for doing it) anyway than...

Can't tell you anything about hedge funds, but when I started as a CTA, I kept an audited track record for a couple of years, then posted it, along with my disclosure doc, etc. on Autumngold & Barclay's for a while, and money found me. If you have a good record at least a few years long...

It doesn't matter whether it is futures or futures options if you are short. If you SELL options, you are liable for the full risk the short options incur as a result of the moves in the underlying futures, regardless of what your margin requirement was. If you BUY options, your risk is...

Just to clarify, as it sounds like there might be some confusion; your margin requirement when trading futures has nothing to do with your risk. It is just a "surety bond" in a sense to help ensure that you will be able to meet any potential losses. You are liable for the full losses your...

Don't know about forex (wouldn't go near that with a ten foot pole myself...), but you can trade futures & options on futures in an IRA that is held in an appropriate IRA trust account. Millennium Trust is one that some of my CTA clients used, there are others as well, each has its own rules...

It has to do with fungibility (directly in some cases, e.g. 33 oz vs. 100 oz gold) and predictible relationships between the products traded. While they are different contracts, with somewhat different underlyings, there is still a price relationship that is a result of actual physical or...

It's just arbitrage. Even in a thin market, for pros, there are also other ways of laying off risk, e.g. hedging in the underlying directly, EFP, trading closely related markets, etc., so even in what looks like a thin market, there are usually opportunities for arbitrage somewhere, which...

I can only speak to the bean & corn option pits (the only ones I've traded), but both are very deep & liquid pits, and you would be OK with stop market orders, while limits might get you skipped as often as not, depending on how much leeway you provided between your stop & limit. In those pits...