Are you a Futures trader? Then our Infinity Future broker review is for you! Trading futures is a complicated business, even for experienced traders. And, so is shopping for the right brokerage firm to use. It’s not just about contract fees and trading platforms (although both are important factors to consider). If you want to know the missing ingredient to look for when shopping, you might want to keep reading our Infinity Futures broker review.
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Infinity Futures Review Introduction
Infinity Futures, LLC is an Independent Introducing Brokerage firm headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. And for the past 25 years, Infinity has been providing customers worldwide with access to the global derivatives markets. They offer different trading platforms as well as a mobile trading platform.
What Is an Independent Introducing Brokerage (AB) Firm?
An Introducing Brokerage is a brokerage who has direct relationships with clients; yet sends its actual order requests to another firm for execution on the trading floor.
At this point, you’re probably wondering why a company would do this? Wouldn’t it make more sense to provide a one-stop shopping experience for customers?
Infinity Futures doesn’t think so. They’d rather focus their energies servicing the needs of their clients and leave the order execution business to their partner firm; TransAct Futures.
Our Infinity Futures Broker review is something to read if you’ve taken our Futures trading course. Just like with anything, you need to study to learn how to trade Futures.
Who Is TransAct Futures?
TransAct Futures is an FCM, or futures commissions merchant. In fact, Infinity Futures is a wholly-owned subsidiary of TransAct Futures.
For those of you unfamiliar with FCM’s, they facilitate the acceptance of buy/sell orders for futures or options on futures along with the payment (commission) from customers.
Along the same lines, an FCM has the responsibility of collecting margin from customers and for ensuring asset delivery once the futures contract has expired.
In order to do this, TransAct Futures provides the trading software, facilitates trade execution with the exchange and holds customer money in customer segregated accounts.
To make a long story short, Infinity Futures is your broker and TransAct Futures is the futures commissions merchant (FCM).
Click here for next level stock training and more advanced Futures training.
Going The Extra Customer Service Mile
Infinity prides itself on its customer service. Every single account holder at Infinity is assigned a personal Customer Service Representative who also has CFTC and NFA credentials).
And it gets better; you also get a toll free number to their desk for direct access. You can contact Infinity as well to discuss any issue from lost internet connections, how to use trading platforms, charting software, rules of the exchange, hours, and issues affecting the markets.
Trade Anywhere, Anytime in the World
One thing I like about Infinity is their fully integrated AT trading platform. You can trade from almost any device, anyplace, anytime, how great is that?
In fact, if your like Futures trading, then check out our live trading room. We have some fantastic Futures traders that stream in there. This Infinity Future Broker review can help you find a broker that words for you as well.
Infinity Futures broker is great because it has a streamlined software coupled with quality data. As a result, latency times are excellent. They have tick charts with no delay. Orders are filled almost immediately. If you’ve dealt with slow order fills then you know how important this is.
Who Is Infinity Futures For?
Infinity Futures’ primary emphasis of service appears to be toward intraday derivative traders. With decent pricing for trade commissions; far better than popular brokers such as TD Ameritrade or eTrade.
We’ve discovered in our Infinity Futures Broker review that they have extremely low intraday margin requirements to open and hold positions. As a result, Infinity Futures offers a compelling draw for this particular audience.
Our stock market indexes list can give you more ideas of different markets to trade.
Who Is Infinity Futures For?
Infinity Futures’ primary emphasis of service appears to be toward intraday derivative traders. With decent pricing for trade commissions; far better than popular brokers such as TD Ameritrade or eTrade.
We’ve discovered in our Infinity Futures Broker review that they have extremely low intraday margin requirements to open and hold positions. As a result, Infinity Futures offers a compelling draw for this particular audience.
Our stock market indexes list can give you more ideas of different markets to trade.
How Do I Open an Infinity Account?
Opening an account is simple; all you need to do is click the “Open an Account” link on their website. From there, you follow the steps and fill out the application. For those of you who prefer the paper route, you can download the account forms to fill out by hand.
Infinity Futures Cost Structure
The cost structure for placing trades is definitely on the low end of the spectrum. Arguably, the largest and best-known IB for derivative markets is Interactive Brokers.
Coming in at $4/RT per contract Interactive Brokers is hard to beat. Even some of the most popular brokerage firms, such as eTrade, can get as high as $10 / RT. But, with some crafty negotiation, you can talk yourself down to $5 / RT per contract with Infinity.
Infinity Futures Sierra Charts
- Sierra charts are used by Infinity Futures. Sierra charts has a stable and fast feed for their data. They offer a lot of studies for your charts. Audio playback is something else they offer that traders love. Sierra Charts also offers simulated trading. Which is necessary for any new trading style and broker.
What About Other Charting Software?
I have to be honest, Infinity’s charting software is basic. However, it is free if you make 10 RT trades per month. What’s more, they slash their data fees only cost $15/month for the basic package.
Comparatively, Trade Navigator, a popular charting software package, costs $60/month for the same coverage and feed quality. And for that fact alone, Infinity is a real bargain. It’s also worth noting eSignal can be connected as well as BookMap.
Infinity Futures Data and Trade Latency
One important consideration to take into account when getting involved in intra-day futures trading is latency. For starters, latency matters because the price of a futures contract can move several units (referred to as ticks) within seconds.
To put this in perspective, the most highly traded derivative contract is the ES, whose price correlates to the S&P 500 index. Each tick has a value of $12.50 per contract. Unfortunately, just a few seconds of latency before an order is filled can amount to a significant amount of money lost over time.
Let’s take a market order to buy ten contracts as an example. If it gets filled just three ticks away from when the order was first transmitted, that ends up being $375 off the realized profit or loss of the trade.
What Is the Solution?
Infinity has streamlined software and a quality data feed which results in excellent latency times. Their data reflects the tick-to-tick price changes with almost no delay; and orders get filled within milliseconds as to when they are transmitted. Without a doubt, this is a fantastic selling point for the serious trader.
Notably, the only way to get a significant edge over Infinity Futures’ execution times is to switch to one with institutional infrastructure. Not surprisingly, this comes with a significant increase in cost.
Take Trading Technologies as an example. They have the most easily accessible institutional-grade data and software for the retail trader. But their minimum monthly fee is $400. The choice is yours.
Pros of Infinity Futures
- Almost no slippage ever.
- Easy to use trading platform
- Excellent customer service with nearly 24-hour support desk to assist traders after hours
- Low barrier to entry for funding an account, getting data, and executing orders with competitive latency
- Day trade margins (E-mini S&P 500) can be as low as $500 per contract
- Nearly around the clock trading hours starting Sunday afternoons and continuing through Friday.
Cons of Infinity Futures
- A primitive platform that lacks functionality
- The platform only highlights the row with the last price traded rather than having the bid, ask, and last price row highlighted.
- If you add contracts, then scale-out, the profit and loss doesn’t show correctly.
- Can only use FIFO (they are getting rid of LIFO and Avg buy/sell)
- The InfinityAT™ trading platform is designed and optimized for PC based machines and will not run on a Mac operating system.
- Lack of server-side order execution
Infinity Futures Competitors
Investors and traders interested in futures trading may want to consider an account with TD Ameritrade. TOS hosts more than 50 futures products in a variety of categories, such as commodities, stock index futures, currencies and bonds. The commission for trading futures on TOS is $2.25 per buy or sell contract (negotiable for active traders). What I like about TD Ameritrade is its advanced platform for futures trading.
Without a doubt, TD Ameritrade’s platform is more sophisticated than at Infinity Futures. We also have the discount broker TastyWorks who is much better priced than TD Ameritrade.
The last time I checked, TastyWorks’s commissions on futures trading were $1.25 per contract.
Infinity Futures Final Thoughts
Overall, IF is an established broker that has largely provided excellent service to many customers over the year. Their customer service, infrastructure, data, trading costs, and especially intraday margin rates are very competitive.
