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Interactive Brokers not allowing futures trading in IRAs
Thanks everyone for your feedback. I spent some time Friday speaking with different brokers and IRA trustee companies. It seems to me that there are two options to use for me to continue to trade futures in my IRA. One is to move to a broker similar to IB such as TOS that does not use a 3rd party trustee company and also offers stock and option trading at a reasonable cost. The other is to use a trustee company with a discount futures trading company. Total cost seems to be lower with the later option. However, I still may not go that route simply due to the lower complexity of using a single source broker such as TOS.
Anyhow, below is a comparison I did to get an understanding of the different cost options in case you are interested.
That's a nice comparison chart. One key feature of IB is their Universal Account where you can trade futures, stocks, and options from the same account. I'm not aware of another retail broker that offers this capability. in this case, if you wanted the flexibility to trade both futures and stocks from your IRA, moving your IRA from IB to another broker could mean splitting your funds into two separate accounts (might be with the same broker) and paying two sets of fees.
I can't believe how IB has handled the policy change.
They have a bulletin for each and every hiccup in data drops, trading hours, etc. yet they didn't even bother to tell anyone about the change in policy. That lack of communication is what leads me to not trust them.
What a pain it has been trying to get a custodian, etc. A nice 300 per year charge on top of all of the headache.
Thinkorswim is an option that allows futures, options and stocks as far as I know. I applied last night and waiting for approval before transferring my IB account over to TOS.
I think they act at their own custodian, or maybe have an arrangement with a custodial company, so there are no large fees that I know of.
Not sure how that is still possible?? For me, I was shut down last Friday executing auto-trades from MultiCharts. I started receiving pop-up messages out of MultiCharts telling me that I didn't have the proper account permissions.
That's when I called IB, and started asking questions. They told me that any open futures trades would be allowed to continue past the March 6/Midnight decision point, but once closed that would be the final trade allowed. Ongoing, no subsequent trades would be allowed.
Did you already have something open, or did you actually initiate something since the cutoff time?
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Be careful when transferring your IRA's.
There were new US IRS Tax Rules that came into effective in 2015 which I believe only allows individuals to make one transfer a year. Additional transfers I believe can be taxed.
"Although an eligible IRA distribution received on or after Jan. 1, 2015 and properly rolled over to another IRA will still get tax-free treatment, subsequent distributions from any of the individual’s IRAs (including traditional and Roth IRAs) received within one year after that distribution will not get tax-free rollover treatment. "
NOTE: I'm a trader not an accountant. While I believe this information to correct it actually may not be so you should probably check with your accountant.