Best Futures Brokers
Futures trading is a contract between a buyer looking to invest and a seller and where the contract is made for the future and has an expiration date. There are primarily two participants, hedgers and speculators. Hedgers look to try and protect their assets from risks whilst speculators are usually floor traders.
Futures trading is a popular choice for active investors who would like to trade long and short with leveraged positions on a variety of different asset classes. The wide range of futures contracts means that there is ample opportunity to look for trades. The types of futures available to trade include a wide range of financial and commodity-based contracts, from indexes, currencies, and debt to energies and metals, to agriculture products.
Individual investors and traders most commonly use futures as a way to speculate on the future price movement of the underlying asset. They seek to profit by expressing their opinion about where the market may be headed for a certain commodity, index, or other financial product. Future contracts, because of the way they are structured and traded, have many inherent advantages over trading stocks.
In order to trade futures, you will need an account with a future broker and access to a trading platform. There are quite a few options when it comes to choosing a broker, so it can be quite hard to decide on which is the right one for you.
We have put together this futures trading broker guide to help you understand more about the options available to you and discover some of the best futures brokers out there today. Having the best brokers for trading futures according to our findings listed in one place, can help you save time when looking for the best future broker for your own individual needs.
Top 10 Futures Brokers
ASIC, BaFin, CFTC, DFSA, FCA, FINMA, FMA, FSA, FSCA, JFSA, MAFF, MAS, METI, NFA
$250
1974
1:200
IG
IG are one of the most well established and regulated brokers you will find. You can trade futures and speculate on exclusive 24/7 indices, popular global commodities and selection of bonds. When trading futures with IG, you will be speculating on the underlying market price, without entering the futures contract yourself. They have a great selection of futures to choose from with over 80 indices and a huge range of commodity and bond futures.
Interactive Brokers
Interactive Brokers are one of the best futures brokers as they have an excellent range of futures, commodities and future options available to trade on over 35 market centers worldwide. You can get professional access to agriculture, currency, energy, equity index, fixed income, metals, and volatility futures from a single powerful platform. The broker provides you with a great choice of advanced tools free of charge to help you trade the futures market effectively.
TD Ameritrade
TD Ameritrade offers a broad array of futures trading tools and resources. You can learn all about futures and prep yourself for trading with a fantastic collection of in-depth videos, articles, and quick info guides. Commodities, index, treasury – you can trade all that and more.
With a TD Ameritrade account, you’ll have access to thinkorswim, a powerful trading platform for futures trading, as well as other investments. This feature-packed trading platform lets you monitor the futures markets, plan your strategy, and implement it in one convenient, easy-to-use, and integrated place.
Designed especially for futures traders, the Active Trader tab on thinkorswim features an easy-to-use bid/ask price ladder, one-click order entry, fully customizable charting, and advanced order types. Identify trends, pinpoint exit and entry points, and get access to more than 400 technical studies and custom charts, all in one place.
With thinkorswim Mobile, you can place trades, access technical studies and drawings on charts, explore education, and contact support, all from the palm of your hand. Plus, monitor and manage positions and risk, at any time, from anywhere.
TradeStation
TradeStation offers over 350 futures and futures options products to trade, which means expanded trading opportunities in a wide range of markets, including indexes, commodities, metals, and more. They have all of the trading tools and data you need to trade futures effectively, including an advanced trading platform, dedicated futures specialists, educational resources, and commission-free pricing plans.
TradeStation’s feature-rich trading platform lets traders monitor the markets, plan strategies, and implement them in one easy-to-use and convenient place. You have everything you need to stay up to date on the latest financial news with Market Insights. Get daily briefings on market activities, trading opportunities, and education, including earnings recaps and insights from industry veterans.
TradeStation FuturesPlus powered by Trading Technologies is a feature-rich platform for futures options traders. TradeStation customers can trade the leading international exchanges and liquidity platforms, including CME and ICE, on the web or a mobile device.
Overall, TradeStation can be a great futures trading broker for investors and traders who want to get started in futures trading, with low minimums and one of the most impressive selections of futures to choose from. They have everything you need from a futures broker and more.
IC Markets
IC Markets offer a decent range of futures from around the world, including ICE Dollar Index and CBOE VIX Index. I have included them as they also have a great selection of other financial instruments including CFDs on stocks, forex, commodities and cryptocurrency. Online futures based CFDs are offered exclusively on IC Markets’ MetaTrader 4 Platform. Futures CFD are priced directly from the underlying futures markets, with commissions, financing charges and dividend adjustments all built into the spread itself. IC Markets offers competitive spreads across all of their future CFDs. They have excellent trading conditions including fast execution speeds via powerful trading platforms that are loaded with powerful tools for comprehensive market analysis. This is backed up by excellent 24/7 multilingual customer support.
EXANTE
EXANTE is a multi-asset brokerage firm for professionals that offers direct access to trade 400,000+ financial instruments over 50 financial markets through one account via sophisticated trading platforms.
Tickmill
Tickmill is a multi-regulated online broker offering retail and institutional clients across the globe a decent choice of financial instruments. Spreads and commissions are competitive with flexible accounts. Platforms and tools are sufficient but educational material is lacking and they could offer more trading products.
FXGiants
FXGiants is a multi-regulated online broker offering clients a good range of financial instruments to trade on powerful trading platforms with very flexible account types, trading tools for market analysis and vast range of educational materials for beginners.
Tradovate
Tradovate is a great broker for trading futures and options with competitive fees on excellent platforms for web, desktop and mobile. You get access to a great range of powerful tools to improve your trading strategies and can integrate with third-party solutions.
Optimus Futures
Optimus Futures is a leading online futures broker that caters to traders seeking low latency execution and stable data feeds combined with aggressive margins and deep discount commissions.
Conclusion
Here you will find our best futures brokers, based on thousands of hours of extensive research, testing and analysis across hundreds of brokers. Upon conclusion of each of our broker reviews, we have assigned each broker with a rating.
Some of the most important factors that contribute towards a good broker for trading futures online have been considered including things such as the available futures, other financial instruments, platforms, apps, tools, spreads, execution, liquidity, fees, education, funding options, regulation, customer service and more.
Each of our best brokers for futures trading have undergone and passed our stringent broker reviews with flying colours, based on what we consider to be amongst the most important considerations when choosing a future broker. These brokers are well-established within the online trading industry, providing top future trading conditions to traders and investors of all experience levels.
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