Looking for a US share trading dollar account.

[khalil_a78]

Just registered, I have a question and hope I have selected the right Forum.

I am based in the UK and I currently have a Charles Schwab Europe US share trading dollar account. I find however that the Charles Schwab commission charges are too high. What I am looking for is an alternative stock broker that will allow me to open a dollar account and deal in the US markets from the UK. Can anyway help?

Thanks

Khalil

 

[Mr. Charts]

Interactivebrokers

 

[Trader333]

Why not open an account with www.Interactivebrokers.com which would allow you to have a base currency of your choosing and still trade US shares. Commissions are low and it is direct access.

In my view they are very hard to beat as a broker.



Paul

 

[theknifemac]

Sorry to hijack the thread a little, but I am interested in a comment Paul made earlier about the intraday FX rate and the fact that a Universal account is denominated in your chosen currency.

I had been hoping that opening an IB account soon (or in fact any US account) would allow me to benefit from the comparatively high FX rate of 1.8 or so, thus giving me a higher dollar balance in my account than I would have got a few months ago, keeping me well above the PDT limit.

How would this work if my account was denominated in GBP ?

e.g open account with £20K => $36K right now

after some trading my account is up $4K - well we have to be positive, will my sterling amount then be 20K plus 4K / current FX ? Or will it be marked to market into sterling each day with the current FX rate ?

Paul, I also remember you saying something about keeping some of you cash in US and some in GBP at IB to avoid FX issues, or was it someone else ?

Thanks

Mac

 

[Trader333]

Mac,

What you have described is pretty much what happens. Personally I wouldnt keep less than $30K in my account for PDT which is currently only £16.5K

As you say if you make $4000 then this equates to $4000/(FX rate that day) which is about £2.2K (at $1.8 to £1 today)

This is automatically converted to your base currency at the end of the day.

It was me who has converted half my account to USD and I will have lost some money in the exchange rate changes but I am unconcerned about this. If it had gone the other way then it would have protected my PDT status so it is swings and roundabouts.

I hope this helps


Paul

 

[theknifemac]

Paul

Thanks very much - it all makes sense now, so the only FX risk as such is if you lose enough money and / or the FX rate moves further against you so that on a given day your account is no longer above the PDT limit ?

I have some more questions for you about how you use IB for intra-day trading, specifically how you get round the restriction of the number of stocks in TWS ?

I am developing systems which will trade automatically, my question is how to determine which stocks to monitor each day. I can base this on stocks which have historically produced signals on my systems, but I would prefer to monitor a greater number of stocks in real time, looking for my signals. For this reason I am thinking of using TrackTrade/MyTrack instead of IB.

Any thoughts ?

Mac

 

[Trader333]

Mac,

Your understanding of PDT is correct so if you got into a situation where your account dropped below PDT status then you would not be allowed to open any new positions but you can close any that are open. This would apply until your account is back up to PDT status again.

Personally I monitor around 160 Nasdaq stocks continuously during the trading day. If I get a trading signal I will then enter it into TWS and trade it so I dont need to get around the 40 symbol limit in TWS because I am only using it to trade.

If you are looking for automated trading methods then you will need software that uses the TWS API and would just trade the instrument as and when it needed to. Unless you expect to have more than 40 positions open at once, then there should not be an issue. I dont use third party interfaces so I am unable to say more.

The stocks that I monitor were determined by the following:

1) Historical Volume > 1.5 Million per day
2) Value between $15 and $80
3) Historical daily range of over $1

Of course these need to be re-checked every so often.

I hope this helps


Paul

 

[theknifemac]

Paul

That makes sense. My problem is that I want to monitor the stocks using live prices in my software watching for signals. The 40 symbol limit in TWS is a big issue for me. Hence my interest in MyTrack / TestTrack.

I'm also a little concerned about being dependent on a Java app for my trading.

Paul are you using web charts or something else to monitor your watch list ?

Mac

 

[Trader333]

Mac,

I will send you a private message as this going off the subject of this thread a little.



Paul

 

[JonnyT]

Java Apps should be more reliable than apps written in VB or C++ etc due to fact that memory management etc is automatic within the JRE.

My own Java Apps used for trading and TWS have never crashed on me with two years of use.

JonnyT

 

[theknifemac]

Paul thanks for the PM.

JonnyT I know about the advantages of memory management in the JRE but prefer to be in control of memory allocation and clean up rather than leaving it to the Java garbage collector. I've seen a few Java apps which have good performance and some with terrible performance. The difference is in the quality of the code.

Really my point should have been that I'm not too keen being dependent on another app running on my local PC rather than having a direct connection to the data feed servers. My anti Java bias comes from me being a died in the wool C++ developer with some bad experiences of poorly written Java apps.

Ironically I will probably end up wrapping the feed API in my own server process so should stop before I disappear up my own a**e.

Mac

 

[theknifemac]

JonnyT

One quick question for you as you are also developing auto trading apps - how do you get round the TWS 40 symbol limit ? I think you are only trading futures so this is not an issue for you ?

Cheers

Mac