Recent content by Mattybuoy

So how exactly is trading futures NOT trading on margin? Personally, I am not bothered about leverage but the inability to short stocks is a bummer.

It is not possible to buy stock in London and then sell it in Australia. However, what you can do, and I presume this is what 'nine' meant, is buy a stock in London and short the same company in Australia, or vice versa. Examples of where you might do this would be BHP & RIO.

IB is the only one. http://www.interactivebrokers.co.uk

Excellent news about the SIPP account!

As to market cap: From reading their website it seems that IG will in general offer a CFD on all stocks with market cap greater than £10m (c.$20m). However, since they claim to mostly hedge their positions (indeed have to with the synthetic Direct Access platform) it becomes a matter of...

As I understand it the main reason for the 2-1 (50%) limit on stocks leverage in the US is because of the 1929 crash, which was apparently made hugely worse because everyone was on "shoestring" margins. It came in with the 1933(?) Federal Reserve Act, which is still today the basis of most US...

Thanks. I also found semprametals.com, so there are at least those two :)

Sounds good, or it would do if I had the faintest idea what you were on about ;) I'd hazard a guess that "stat arb" means statistical arbitrage but apart from that no idea. Anyway, I saw the news item about these new "e-Minis" from the LME but I was wondering about brokers who offer online...

bullboy8, What you are proposing with holding for 2-5 years is called investing, not trading. There is nothing wrong with that, but most of what is discussed on this site relates to much shorter timeframes. Since you have a plan I would suggest that you stick with it, but why do you need to...

Did you perhaps use a large proportion of your account and the 4x day trading buying power to buy the position? If so, then come end of day your available buying power will reduce to 2x (as per Reg T), hence producing the margin warning. Or, the other possibility is that you are suffering from...

Well that does sound good. Personally I am going to wait until after A Day before I move anywhere. There are still quite a few things to be clarified about the new regime. Good luck with your SIPP.

Java apps in general are more stable when run outside the clunky browser environment using a dedicated standalone JVM. Whether that is possible with the IG software I don't know, but you could ask. Standalone JVMs (or JREs) are available from java.sun.com and other places as free downloads...

I'm not familiar with the Cryptainer product but understand what it is basically doing. It is fine within itself but, as you have already seen with Temporary Internet Files, there can at times be un-encrypted copies of your file in other places. Applications can put stuff all over the place...

BTW, sorry to bang on, but I'm finicky about details ... :)

OK, thanks. I imagine that margin on futures and options will certainly be allowed, since this does not constitute a loan, but rather a "deposit". However, since margin on stocks definitely does constitute a loan, I am wondering how that ties in with the SIPP borrowing rules. I have been...