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Hi,
I am searching for not just one new broker but two of them since I was
thinking I should have a backup to protect against fee
hikes, electronic outages, phone outages, insolvency, whatever.
Unfortunately (even though I have all the asset requirements and then
some) because I am both from Canada and just short of the 50,000 US$
minimum income requirements (which I take it are a regulation now) I am
having to search deep into broker availability land and likely to run
across some very small brokerage companies. Does anyone have any
suggestions on how to quickly find all U.S. (futures and/or stock)
brokers and research them for potential problems. At the bottom, I
included my growing list of brokers I have found so far with a small
comment. Some may find it useful.
Secondly some of you may have had a similar experience and would like to
share possible solutions with the list. Here is the compressed history.
After a long process of [starting out loosing money like most (if not
all) traders do, then preventing myself from wiping out my account by
stopping trading, then working full time at developing methodologies,
then testing them and testing my ability to trade them, then studying
trading psychology to develop the mental stamina, and finally getting my
personal paper trading statistics high enough to build confidence that I
can make a moderate but sufficient living trading as low as 200 shares
day trading stocks and easily make a good living trading only 1 E-Mini
contract in futures without any leverage] I was just starting to trade
live again in stocks. Just to make life interesting, as I finally reach
this stage in self teaching, my broker gets bought out and the new one
has fees so high that it is not possible to scalp with the trend which
is my favorite method. So I am looking for two news brokers as mentioned
in paragraph #1. Because I was just starting to trade again live I don't
have much of a record of income from trading yet and right now I don't
even have a broker. Depending on the results of my brokerage house
search, I am a little concerned I may have to work double duty (a full
time night job and trade 5 hours from 7 am to 12 noon). One has to be
fairly awake to scalp and it will be challenging with this 13+ hours a
day schedule not to mention that I have a wife and kid. As a joke I can
just picture myself falling asleep and placing a forehead order for 5000
shares or 5000 contracts or maybe being so tired I can't find the
terminal. Sorry, I promised Robin Williams I would never joke again. So,
any suggestions to avoid the 13+ hours a day solution would be greatly
appreciated. I have already run across one firm that does not want to
use the "additional risk disclosure statement" which would seem like the
most likely better solution. I figure the smaller brokerage houses are
more likely to use it.
Interactive Brokers (just sent an application. This may be the best so
far for commissions and products)
index advisor (considering applying here).
TradeStation (I do not meet the Income requirement of $50,000
outside of trading, Can't trade stocks with them).
(they don't seem to want to use the
standard "additional risk disclosure statement"
(either that or I told a bad joke and
Robin Williams called them -
Please don't take me seriously, Robin did
not call them. Yes I know, you already knew that!
Sorry, with me every challenge leads to a
joke, a solution then hard work then another joke).
Cyber trader (Only stocks and a bit expensive to make scalping
practical)
Disnat Direct (Only stocks and a way too expensive to make my
form of scalping practical)
Preferred Trade (Does not handle Canadian accounts)
MB Trading (Does not handle Canadian accounts)
Spike Trading (Can't find their fees easily on the web so I am
not interested).
Viper Trading (not contacted yet)
Express Futures (not investigated yet)
CFG (not investigated yet)
rd.business.com (this is a search engine for brokerage with full link
below. Just started looking at it)
http://www.business.com/directory/financial_services/investment_banking_and_brokerage/brokerage_firms/online_brokerages/
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