What I can trade with Roth IRA ?

W

Walther

Does anyone knows if I can trade futures or qqq with Roth IRA funds ? Which brokers would accept such arrangement?
Thanks,
Walter
 
I believe you can use ~30% of your IRA equity to trade futures with tradestation securities. I looked into them for a bit, but they had some really high fees ($250-300/yr in trustee fees). The 30% total must exceed a $7500 minimum.

Trading the Q's shouldn't be a problem as long as you don't want to go short. Some brokers allow long calls/puts in IRA accounts.

Later,

Cracked
 
You can trade whayever you want as long as no margin is required, an Ira is a cash account, therefore nothing short and only covered options.
 
You can trade just about anything. The key is to separate the account from the broker. By setting up a account at a firm that just acts as the plan administrator, you can do anything in an IRA (buy/sell futures, sell naked options, speculate in a horse racing partnership, oil drilling partnerships, etc.). My wife and I have accounts at Mid-Ohio Securities http://www.midoh.com. After funding the account I just setup a regular futures account using the IRA plan as the account holder. None of the 30-40% of assets max. in futures problems, (100% of funds less a few thousand required to stay in the plan account ...with interest). By doing it this way, the broker doesn't have a fudiciary responsibility and you get to trade it any way you want.
 
One caution to what acracy says. Be careful that you don't trade on margin or any form of borrowed money using an IRA. The IRS regs on IRA accounts explicitly prohibit using an IRA as a collateral. If the IRS catches someone doing that, they will declare the pledged money to a be distribution from out of the IRA.

Excerpt from from http://invest-faq.com/articles/ret-plan-trad-ira.html
Occasionally the question crops up as to exactly why people cannot go short (see the article elsewhere in the FAQ explaining short sales) in an IRA account. The restriction comes from the combination of the following three facts. First, the law governing IRAs says that if any part of an IRA is used as collateral, the entire IRA is considered distributed and thus subject to income tax and penalties. Second, the rules imposed by the Federal Reserve Board et al. say that short sales have to take place in a margin account. Third and finally, margin accounts require that you pledge the account as collateral. So if you try to turn an IRA into a margin account, you'll void the IRA; but without a margin account, you can't sell short.
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Be careful with IRS, they can open up a major can of woop-ass on those that fail to follow their voluminous, poorly explained, and torturous regs.


Trade well,
Traden4Alpha
 
Quote from Walther:

Does anyone knows if I can trade futures or qqq with Roth IRA funds ? Which brokers would accept such arrangement?
Thanks,
Walter
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I knows you can trade qqq
 
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