Retail FX to where??

Without providing too many details, say I want to move on to the bigger leagues and have between 250K and 500K to trade with. No other assets, but have professional trading industry experience. What serious brokers/banks would be a good option?

I'm looking for:

1. Access to CME/CBOT/NYMEX, ICE, EUREX, Liffe futures and options

2. OTC precious metals.

3. Spot FX (Most important)

4. Access to all of the above through one broker. (Multiple platforms OK)

5. Access to market data for all of the above through the same broker.

Please pm me if you'd rather take this conversation private.

Why trade metals OTC if you have access to the futures exchanges? Margin reasons? In any event, good luck finding a tighter spread on gold/silver OTC than you'll find on the NYMEX.

Aside from OTC metals, only one firm comes to mind, and that's IB. And not to sound like I'm being a shill for IB, I honestly don't know of any other broker that all offers nearly all those features and does them well (other than the bulge bracket firms, but you'd need much more than $500k for them). There are a few options that will do everything above except EUREX and Liffe, but if you want global exchanges and retail access, IB is pretty much the only option (which is unfortunate, it would be nice if there were multiple options, more competition).

Comex precious metal options aren't liquid enough. The London gold/silver market is a lot more liquid, so I figured spreads would be tighter. EUREX and Liffe would be great, but if I have to sacrifice them for a good broker, I'll definitely consider them.

IB looks like a good option, but I heard too much negative stuff about their front end, and customer support. I don't want to deal with that crap if I don't have to. I'm looking for alternatives to IB. Worst case, I'll have to settle for them.


Anyone know what kind of requirements MF Global has?

See Activtrades.com