Wednesday 29 January 2014

I've moved over to Crossland LLC, Chicago based firm.  Just in process of getting set up with data, order routing etc



Looking forward to starting back where I left off.  I may not trade immediately from day 1, I maybe need to do some testing to check the data but certainly expect to be active within the market in the next 2 weeks.

Sunday 12 January 2014

I'm looking into getting set up with either Dorman Trading or Advantage Futures at the moment, both appear to be reputable firms, I'm waiting on details of platforms, data feeds offered, costs involved etc.

Wednesday 8 January 2014

Due to an issue with the Zen-Fire data provider I formerly used I am unable to trade and my broker has no ETA for when the issues will be resolved therefore I'm considering changing broker.
I'm looking at different factors, I found that the CFTC publish financial data on FCMs, so you can consider factors such as adjusted net capital, customer segregated funds etc for each FCM relative to each other.

See link below to PDF from the CFTC website with the latest data published;

http://www.cftc.gov/ucm/groups/public/@financialdataforfcms/documents/file/fcmdata1013.pdf


Another worthwhile link is the NFA where you can search for regulatory actions taken against any futures broker https://www.nfa.futures.org/basicnet


There's an article on Bloomberg from January last year looking at the ratio of excess capital relative to net adjusted capital for FCMs. May also be of interest.

"Adjusted net capital is the amount of regulatory capital available to meet the minimum net capital requirement as set by the CFTC. Excess net capital is the amount by which adjusted net capital exceeds the net capital requirement. The higher the ratio, the more capital the firm has available beyond what is required."


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-15/cftc-registered-firms-excess-to-net-capital-ratios-table-.html