I'm the manager of a private fund that is about to join the ECM/106-R incentive program. One segment of our business is dedicated to intra-day index futures trading. Hithhereto we've exclusively traded european contracts for this purpose, and would now like to expand this endeavour to the US futures market, namely the ES contract (other index products, as well as fixed income and forex contracts also have our interest, but for this inquiry let's stay with the ES contract for now). We've just concluded a test period, and found that we'll start out with approximately 500 roundturns a day or about 10,000 RT pr. month, with a maximum exposure/open interest of 25 contracts a time and no overnight positions. For that purpose we'd maintain an account of min. 50,000 at any given time.
I gather that the CME charges 1,000 USD for an application for the 106-R/ECM initiative and will waive the requirement of us having to purchase a membership (or leasing two) 'till December 2006. So... we wish to set up for business as soon as possible, which basically leaves me with two questions/issues:
1) which broker to choose to clear our trades and what they'll charge for this. As of now we're apparently inclined to with either Velocity Futures or Global Futures. As a reference Velocity Futures have a commission schedule up on their site here http://www.velocityfutures.com/commisions.asp?products_id=1&exchanges_id=1&product_category_one=353 .
I'm sure we'd be able to negotiate with them and other firms to do slightly better. But besides that, could anyone that have had experience with either of the two (***or another alternative that could offer competitive rates***) inform us of their experiences.
2) Which trading platform the broker can offer and for what cost? I have limited experience with US platforms geared towards intraday trading, but have done some trading on Trademaven. I mention this not because we have any particular preference for this product, but because it offers functions that we're a familiar with and would need for our approach to trading US futures. That is we wish to be able to enter our trades as brackets. I'm aware you all know what it means but jus to spell it out: that it is paramount for us that we simultaneously with our entry, would want our platform to automatically place the target (or targets) and the stop (that would be stop-limit as native for Globex) that we've set beforehand. And a "one fill cancels another (or all others)" feature. With that in mind we'd of-course also want a direct-access platform that gets us the fastests executions and place in the FIFO line for our pre-determined bracket(s). I can see that Xtrader by many is considered the industry-standard platform - am I correct in that bracketing is only supported by the pro-version costing 1,200 - 1,500 USD a month? And do most of you agree with the notion that I seem to be pitched, that xTrader really is the only option when doing just a bit of size. I'm not asking because the extra cost is that much of an issue if it really delivers better executions on a regular basis, but because we really don't need most of the functions. And since we do really need the bracketing functions I spelled out above along with scaling-in and out functions. Looking forward to hear your comments.
adam
I gather that the CME charges 1,000 USD for an application for the 106-R/ECM initiative and will waive the requirement of us having to purchase a membership (or leasing two) 'till December 2006. So... we wish to set up for business as soon as possible, which basically leaves me with two questions/issues:
1) which broker to choose to clear our trades and what they'll charge for this. As of now we're apparently inclined to with either Velocity Futures or Global Futures. As a reference Velocity Futures have a commission schedule up on their site here http://www.velocityfutures.com/commisions.asp?products_id=1&exchanges_id=1&product_category_one=353 .
I'm sure we'd be able to negotiate with them and other firms to do slightly better. But besides that, could anyone that have had experience with either of the two (***or another alternative that could offer competitive rates***) inform us of their experiences.
2) Which trading platform the broker can offer and for what cost? I have limited experience with US platforms geared towards intraday trading, but have done some trading on Trademaven. I mention this not because we have any particular preference for this product, but because it offers functions that we're a familiar with and would need for our approach to trading US futures. That is we wish to be able to enter our trades as brackets. I'm aware you all know what it means but jus to spell it out: that it is paramount for us that we simultaneously with our entry, would want our platform to automatically place the target (or targets) and the stop (that would be stop-limit as native for Globex) that we've set beforehand. And a "one fill cancels another (or all others)" feature. With that in mind we'd of-course also want a direct-access platform that gets us the fastests executions and place in the FIFO line for our pre-determined bracket(s). I can see that Xtrader by many is considered the industry-standard platform - am I correct in that bracketing is only supported by the pro-version costing 1,200 - 1,500 USD a month? And do most of you agree with the notion that I seem to be pitched, that xTrader really is the only option when doing just a bit of size. I'm not asking because the extra cost is that much of an issue if it really delivers better executions on a regular basis, but because we really don't need most of the functions. And since we do really need the bracketing functions I spelled out above along with scaling-in and out functions. Looking forward to hear your comments.
adam
