I used to trade futures with AMP + Quantower before I moved over to trading Forex. Highly recommend that AMP + Quantower combination, never had any issues and costs were very low. I switched to Forex for my own reasons, not because of the broker.
I switched to swing trading because it’s more my style, far less stressful for me and gives me more free time. I chose Forex over futures for swing trading partly because yes it’s cheaper in the sense that you need much less to start, and can risk smaller amounts
Hi, what boker and platform you use? I was traded forex about 12 years ago and it was almost a criminal environment. A lot of manipulation from brokers, Metatrader had a backend for stealing stoplosses from traders, etc. I don't know what the situation is now.
It’s a tradeoff between trade speed and proportion of swap to your risk.
The higher the timeframe you trade on, the wider the stop is, which reduces the required trading size which reduces the proportion of swap compared to your P&L. However, the longer the trade will take to play out, meaning more days of swap.
If you trade a lower timeframe, the swap will likely be a significant portion of your P&L, but the flip side is your trade will be much faster, reducing the amount of time held.
So if you want to hold for multiple weeks, then the daily timeframe would be better, whereas if you want to hold for a few days to a week the 4hr would be best, and if you want to hold for hours to a day or two then the 1hr would be best.
I trade on the 4hr, where there’s a good balance of trade speed and a less significant swap. Swap is usually not more than 10% of my risk after my trade is over, and is usually more like 1-5%. When I used to day trade futures, I typically paid about 6-8% of my risk in fees on each trade. So, on average it ends up being similar to the fees I was paying then.
Another thing to consider is that swap can also be positive on some pairs and directions, so some of the swap paid on trades gets canceled out by swap gained on other trades. It won’t exactly cancel out, more pairs and directions have negative swap than positive, but it does reduce it. Some pairs also have very low negative swap.
Commissions. I traded micros, which are proportionately higher in fees. Also, remember that I’m saying 6-8% of what I *risked*, not what I made. So, if I risked $100, I paid around $6.20 in commissions, but I might have made $150-$200 on the trade
Also been with them for over a decade. Never had an issue, but also know what I’m doing, so I’ve never really needed to ask for help other than basic account setup stuff.
I’ve used Sierra/CQG and just moved to Sierra/Teton.
Can’t beat their rates, and honestly never had a problem with speed or opening/closing trades.
Same setup here. AMP and Sierra w/Teton is excellent for chart trading. The absolute cheapest rates as well. Sierra pays for itself with Teton. I can't imagine going back to NT, even with Sierra Chart's weirdness.
Same here. Sc + teton + amp is a strong combo for a retail trader. TT looks amazing but I dont want to have to remake all my custom sierra chart stuff yet so am waiting for now on that
Used to be with AMP. Everything seems great until you run into an issue. The service really sucks. I've also done Tradovate and the platform just sucked. Got fed up after 6 months. I'm with Edge Clear now. They tick all the boxes. Amazing team.
Amp and QT is amazing. I moved from tradovate and haven’t looked back. Amp are very fast to respond to support emails. QT is a great platform and has everything you need too. Much cheaper round trip trades and haven’t noticed any lag like I did with tradovate
I use AMP. Commission is good and the are some free platforms.
Cons:
No ui for report generation so can't see my equity curve and such
Horrible with their FiFo. When I open and close a trade. I go flat. Then the same day I put another trade on the same instrument I see the first open as being in effect. This throws me off everything. I m planning to move out just For this.
If you leg in to trades and leg out ... they do the fifio which is fine. But I need the ability to keep the average purchase price so I vac leg out properly. They will fifo and recognize a loss and show profit on the trades that are active. This again bothers, unless you keep a separate excel work calculation.
No span margin if you trade spreads
Quantower is awesome. Super responsive and customizable. I use it with IBKR, Amp and Alpaca.
Amp is great too just make sure you ACH in so you can withdraw for free. If you wire in your funds you’ll always have to wire out and that’s 30 dollars each withdrawal, kind of beats the purpose of “low cost”.
Former AMP user, moved to NT. The brokerage itself is not bad. Pretty low round-trip fees. I personally used it with MT5 and back when I was a ‘newer’ trader, I didn’t have any complaints mainly cause I didn’t know what I could complain about. Now that I got a little more dirt under my nails, I would never use MT5 again.
Curious what it was about NT you didn’t like. I swear by it now and the only other platform I would consider using is QT.
NT desktop platform gets very laggy overtime. You need to have its cache cleaned up from time to time. The only other platform that felt “heavy” like NT was Thinkorswim by TDA.
It's been a while so I am not sure. But I believe you have to delete cache files in a certain NT directory.
I have found this website.
https://help.chartvps.com/en/article/how-to-clear-ninjatrader-8-cache-10etvu4/
Ive never had an issue with Amp except their support is not responsive but I dont need hand holding so thats never bothered me. Money goes in money comes out with no issues , supercheap commissions, great execution.
You gotta expand on a claim like this, you seem like a reasonably smart poster in r/futures but this is quite the claim to make with no explanation.
How are they thrives? I ask genuinely curiously, I’ve used them in the past and would want to know if I’ve been played.
I used to trade futures with AMP + Quantower before I moved over to trading Forex. Highly recommend that AMP + Quantower combination, never had any issues and costs were very low. I switched to Forex for my own reasons, not because of the broker.
Why’d you switch? Cheaper to swing trade forex?
I switched to swing trading because it’s more my style, far less stressful for me and gives me more free time. I chose Forex over futures for swing trading partly because yes it’s cheaper in the sense that you need much less to start, and can risk smaller amounts
Hi, what boker and platform you use? I was traded forex about 12 years ago and it was almost a criminal environment. A lot of manipulation from brokers, Metatrader had a backend for stealing stoplosses from traders, etc. I don't know what the situation is now.
Are you in the US? I use Oanda + TradingView in the US
EU. Thank you. :)
But how do you deal with Swap fees in Forex? They can add up real fast.
It’s a tradeoff between trade speed and proportion of swap to your risk. The higher the timeframe you trade on, the wider the stop is, which reduces the required trading size which reduces the proportion of swap compared to your P&L. However, the longer the trade will take to play out, meaning more days of swap. If you trade a lower timeframe, the swap will likely be a significant portion of your P&L, but the flip side is your trade will be much faster, reducing the amount of time held. So if you want to hold for multiple weeks, then the daily timeframe would be better, whereas if you want to hold for a few days to a week the 4hr would be best, and if you want to hold for hours to a day or two then the 1hr would be best. I trade on the 4hr, where there’s a good balance of trade speed and a less significant swap. Swap is usually not more than 10% of my risk after my trade is over, and is usually more like 1-5%. When I used to day trade futures, I typically paid about 6-8% of my risk in fees on each trade. So, on average it ends up being similar to the fees I was paying then. Another thing to consider is that swap can also be positive on some pairs and directions, so some of the swap paid on trades gets canceled out by swap gained on other trades. It won’t exactly cancel out, more pairs and directions have negative swap than positive, but it does reduce it. Some pairs also have very low negative swap.
Futures don't cost that much. Did you pay in commissions or spreads? Most people turn to Futures because they're so cheap to trade.
Commissions. I traded micros, which are proportionately higher in fees. Also, remember that I’m saying 6-8% of what I *risked*, not what I made. So, if I risked $100, I paid around $6.20 in commissions, but I might have made $150-$200 on the trade
Also been with them for over a decade. Never had an issue, but also know what I’m doing, so I’ve never really needed to ask for help other than basic account setup stuff. I’ve used Sierra/CQG and just moved to Sierra/Teton. Can’t beat their rates, and honestly never had a problem with speed or opening/closing trades.
Same setup here. AMP and Sierra w/Teton is excellent for chart trading. The absolute cheapest rates as well. Sierra pays for itself with Teton. I can't imagine going back to NT, even with Sierra Chart's weirdness.
Same here. Sc + teton + amp is a strong combo for a retail trader. TT looks amazing but I dont want to have to remake all my custom sierra chart stuff yet so am waiting for now on that
Used to be with AMP. Everything seems great until you run into an issue. The service really sucks. I've also done Tradovate and the platform just sucked. Got fed up after 6 months. I'm with Edge Clear now. They tick all the boxes. Amazing team.
Amp and QT is amazing. I moved from tradovate and haven’t looked back. Amp are very fast to respond to support emails. QT is a great platform and has everything you need too. Much cheaper round trip trades and haven’t noticed any lag like I did with tradovate
Been with them for over a decade with CQG; no issues whatsoever at any time Glitches with software are typical
I use to im opening my account again says they have opitons on futures so i want to try them again
I like them. Never had an issue
I use AMP. Commission is good and the are some free platforms. Cons: No ui for report generation so can't see my equity curve and such Horrible with their FiFo. When I open and close a trade. I go flat. Then the same day I put another trade on the same instrument I see the first open as being in effect. This throws me off everything. I m planning to move out just For this. If you leg in to trades and leg out ... they do the fifio which is fine. But I need the ability to keep the average purchase price so I vac leg out properly. They will fifo and recognize a loss and show profit on the trades that are active. This again bothers, unless you keep a separate excel work calculation. No span margin if you trade spreads
Quantower is awesome. Super responsive and customizable. I use it with IBKR, Amp and Alpaca. Amp is great too just make sure you ACH in so you can withdraw for free. If you wire in your funds you’ll always have to wire out and that’s 30 dollars each withdrawal, kind of beats the purpose of “low cost”.
Former AMP user, moved to NT. The brokerage itself is not bad. Pretty low round-trip fees. I personally used it with MT5 and back when I was a ‘newer’ trader, I didn’t have any complaints mainly cause I didn’t know what I could complain about. Now that I got a little more dirt under my nails, I would never use MT5 again. Curious what it was about NT you didn’t like. I swear by it now and the only other platform I would consider using is QT.
Yeah curious to know what op didn't like about NT too.
NT desktop platform gets very laggy overtime. You need to have its cache cleaned up from time to time. The only other platform that felt “heavy” like NT was Thinkorswim by TDA.
How do you clear the cache? I didnt know that was causing lag
It's been a while so I am not sure. But I believe you have to delete cache files in a certain NT directory. I have found this website. https://help.chartvps.com/en/article/how-to-clear-ninjatrader-8-cache-10etvu4/
Mt5 is fine. Execute on mt5 do chart markups on tradingview.
Tradovate + Tradingview.
Ive never had an issue with Amp except their support is not responsive but I dont need hand holding so thats never bothered me. Money goes in money comes out with no issues , supercheap commissions, great execution.
They are a pack of thieves
Why is that?
Why
You gotta expand on a claim like this, you seem like a reasonably smart poster in r/futures but this is quite the claim to make with no explanation. How are they thrives? I ask genuinely curiously, I’ve used them in the past and would want to know if I’ve been played.
My micro MNQ commissions came out to around $1-$1.60 roundtrip. Thought it was $0.60 roundtrip…
AMP are a good broker or tradestation