sbirch

Hello, I'm not well acquainted with bonds, as my post will no doubt make clear . . . I'm trading a long term trend-following strategy. My reading implies that a significant contributor to the returns of trend-following funds is "collateral yield"; namely, the fund's cash is invested in bonds and this is used as collateral to fund positions in futures markets. I am not a fund, I don't trade futures, and my broker won't allow me to use bonds as collateral. Is there a way that I can simulate this by taking positions in a bond ETF such as BND or AGG rather than have cash sitting in my account earning nothing? Are bond prices dictated by anything other than their projected yield? In short, I'm trying to simulate what a billion dollar hedge fund might do, but with a 10k account Thanks for your help. Sara

Thanks for that, sounds perfect! I would rather avoid spreadbetting if possible and was only considering it as a last resort due to the account fees problem. I'll take a look at lightspeed. Cheers!

I would like to start trading ETFs with a minimum holding period of one month. To avoid account inactivity fees with regular brokers I had considered using spreadbetting, but I'm a little confused by the funding requirements With daily funded bets (I'm looking at IG Index) the funding charges seem to be based on the assumption that I am borrowing money from the spreadbetting firm to leverage the position, but if the position was un-leveraged (i.e. I buy £1 per point on an etf trading at £100 and keep £100 in my account) then I wouldn't need to borrow money. In this scenario, why would IG still charge me to roll over the daily funded bet? SB

I'd like to start trading un-leveraged ETFs with minimum holding periods of one month. I have fairly limited capital (this is just a hobby and an opportunity to test my trading ideas), and so I might be trading as few as 100 shares per month. All the brokers that I have found seem to charge hefty account fees for such low levels of activity, and this would completely wipe out the type of profits that I hope to make. Can anyone suggest a broker that does not penalize for low activity in this way? SB