Trade on Your Own
Your platform. Your decisions. Our routing and support.
Self-directed futures trading on the platforms the professional desks run, with direct market access, negotiated commissions and a broker who picks up the phone while the session is open. You place the trades. We make sure nothing gets in their way.
Platform agnostic
Trade on what you already know
We support the platform, rather than pushing you onto ours. If you already have a workspace laid out the way you like it, bring it. If you are starting fresh, we will tell you honestly which one fits how you trade.
CQG
Institutional charting, analytics and order routing. Long-standing choice on professional futures desks.
Rithmic
Low-latency market data and execution, built for traders who care about the milliseconds.
Trading Technologies
Professional order types, spread trading and synthetic orders, with an interface built around speed.
Sierra Chart
Deep charting and custom studies with a light footprint. Popular with traders who build their own tools.
TradingView
The charting most traders already know, connected to a live futures account.
MultiCharts
Backtesting and automation for traders moving from discretionary to systematic.
Direct API & FIX
Connect your own front end or build one. We support custom connectivity where a platform will not do.
Bring your platform
Running something not on this list? With our architecture we can work with almost anything. Ask us.
Third-party platform names are the trademarks of their respective owners.
What sits behind it
Retail account, institutional plumbing
The platform is the part you see. Everything underneath decides whether your order actually behaves the way you expected when the market moves.
Direct market access
Your orders go to the exchange, not into somebody’s internal book. No payment for order flow, no reroute you did not ask for.
Clearing you choose
Multiple clearing agreements, so your account sits at the FCM that suits you rather than the only one we happen to use.
Commissions you negotiate
Rates are set with a person, based on what and how much you trade. You will know your all-in cost per round turn before you fund.
Global market access
Listed futures and options across the major domestic and international venues, from a single account.
Infrastructure behind it
The same proximity-hosted execution stack our systematic clients run on, available when your strategy needs it.
Broker-assisted trading
We still take orders by phone. Call the desk to place, work or flatten a position — particularly useful when a platform or connection lets you down.
Broker-assisted trading
The phone still works
Self-directed does not mean on your own. We still take orders by phone, and when something goes wrong in the middle of a session, a person answers.
- Place, work or flatten an order over the phone while the market is open
- Platform outage, internet down, data feed stalled — call and we handle the position
- Spreads, options and thin back months worked by someone who trades them
- US market hours, with global desk handoffs overnight
An outage is exactly when most platforms route you to a ticket queue, and exactly when that is no use to anyone. Being able to reach a broker who can see your account and act on it is the difference between a bad ten minutes and a bad month.
Questions
What traders ask before they move
What does it cost to trade?
Commissions are competitive and quoted individually rather than posted, because a trader doing two lots a week and one doing two hundred a day are not the same business. Tell the desk what and how much you trade and you will get a number. The full schedule of costs is set out in your account documents.
What is the minimum to open an account?
$5,000 to open. Bear in mind that the practical minimum is usually set by the margin on the contracts you intend to trade, not by the account opening threshold — a single position in some markets will require more than that.
Can I trade from my phone?
Yes. Most of the supported platforms have a mobile app, and you can manage or flatten positions away from the desk. It is a good tool for watching a position and a poor one for putting a complicated order on.
Do you offer trading advice?
On a self-directed account, you make the trading decisions. The desk will talk through order types, margin, contract specifications and mechanics as much as you like. What we will not do is tell you what to buy.
What happens if I get locked out mid-session?
Call the desk. We still take orders by phone, so a broker can see your positions and place, work or flatten for you while you sort the connection out. Platform outages and dead internet connections are precisely when a phone number that a person answers is worth having.
Can I automate my trading later?
Yes, and plenty of clients do. MultiCharts and Sierra Chart support automation directly, and if a strategy outgrows a desktop machine it can move into our hosted environment without changing brokers.
Futures trading is complex and carries the risk of substantial losses. It is not suitable for all investors and you should not rely on any of the information herein as a substitute for the exercise of your own skill and judgment in making a decision on the appropriateness of such investments.
Talk to someone who knows.
A quick phone call will tell you more than an hour on any website. Tell us what you are trying to do and we will tell you whether we are the right fit for it.