Best Futures Brokers of 2023

Futures, also spelt “futures,” are well-liked financial instruments that let investors speculate on how much certain assets will cost in the future.

To make the most of these instruments in your trading strategy, you must choose the best futures broker, i.e., a dependable and skilled broker who can provide a trustworthy trading platform, competitive costs, and excellent customer support.

Where then can I trade futures? Which futures broker should I use? Which brokers have the best reputations? How do you make the best decision? In this article, we fully disclose everything.

Here is our selection of the best Futures brokers!

1. Interactive Brokers

Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. was established over 44 years ago and provides professional-like brokerage services to many users around the world. Depending on your location, you will use the services of one of the group’s registered trademarks.

To exploit the opportunities of the futures market, Interactive Brokers offers you to trade futures via more than 100 types of stock market orders on the following asset categories: agriculture, crypto-currencies, currencies, energy, stock indices, fixed income, interest rates, metals, softs and volatility indices in over 30 global markets.

Commissions range from $0.25 to $5 per contract depending on the country, exchange, type of futures contract and underlying asset. To this must be added stock market fees, regulatory fees and carrying fees. There are also two types of pricing which vary according to your trading volume: decreasing pricing or fixed pricing.

With Interactive Brokers, you can trade futures, but also many other products such as stocks, options, currencies, crypto-currencies, warrants, bonds, FCPs, structured products, CFDs and commodities among other products.

Interactive Brokers is one of the best futures brokers for experienced and demanding traders, as it offers a wide choice of advanced technical and analysis tools, as well as many trading features and services such as ComboTrader or SpreadTrader.

Depending on the traded market, your trading experience and your needs, you can use different trading platforms developed internally or by third parties such as the Client Portal, the Trader Workstation, the Mobile Version, IMPACT, GlobalTrader IBKR and API, as well as TradingView and ProRealTime.

Finally, the broker offers a large section to learn Trading and improve your knowledge such as the IBKR Campus, the Traders’ Academy, Traders’ Insights, Podcasts, the Student Trading Lab and videos among others. However, the content is mostly in English.

2. Saxo Bank

Saxo Bank is the best futures broker on our list. Founded in Denmark in 1992, this broker, regulated in more than 15 jurisdictions in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, offers one of the best professional trading applications for those who want to use the services of an investment bank. to invest in the stock market on many products.

The broker Saxo Banque indeed offers classic stock market investment products, as well as leveraged instruments. It is therefore possible to actively trade rising or falling markets, to create an investment portfolio via a securities account, a PEA or a PEA-SME and also to take advantage of life insurance services.

Regarding futures, Saxo Bank offers you two ways to get exposure to them: directly or through CFD Futures on various financial assets such as indices, Forex, commodities or bonds. The futures contract offering at Saxo Bank is extensive, as it offers over 300 futures from 28 global exchanges, including COMEX, NYMEX, CBOT, CME, ICE, EEX, EUREX and OSA among others.

If you wish to invest in futures directly, the price per contract and per transaction (purchase and sale or expiry) is 2.50 EUR, 6 USD, 6 CAD, 8 CHF, 5 GBP, 10 AUD or even 1,000 JPY among other costs which mainly depend on the financial centre used.

The prices indicated apply to a Classic account (minimum deposit of €300). You can take advantage of lower fees with another type of account. It will also be necessary to take into account carry costs for positions held overnight, as well as conversion costs for positions other than those denominated in euros.

You can use several trading platforms depending on your needs with Saxo Bank. The offer of the SaxoInvestor, SaxoTraderGO and SaxoTraderPRO platforms, which have been developed in-house, is supplemented by third-party software such as TradingView or ProRealTime.

In addition, Saxo Bank offers several advanced tools and features for trading futures contracts such as Futures Spread Trading or Trading via the Level 2 Order Book.

3. Degiro

A Dutch broker regulated since 2013, Degiro has existed since 2008 and is part of our list of the best futures brokers since it offers a wide range of futures contracts traded on 14 international stock exchanges. In addition, it offers many other financial products such as stocks and ETFs, funds, currencies, bonds, options and leveraged products, which help create a solid stock market portfolio.

To trade the futures market, especially on indices and commodities, Degiro offers fees of €0.75 per contract for European exchanges and $0.75 per contract for American exchanges such as CME, CBOE, CBOT, COMEX or NYMEX.

Degiro does not charge any deposit or withdrawal fees, but there is an exchange fee of 0.25% and a management fee of €1 per contract on futures. To be able to trade derivative products such as futures, you will need to open an account with an Active, Trader or Day Trader profile depending on the other financial products you wish to trade, your trading experience and your strategy.

To invest in the stock market, Degiro offers its own customizable and user-friendly online trading platform which offers numerous technical and fundamental analysis tools, market analyses, recommendations, but also news and market insights.

4. Admirals (formerly Admiral Markets)

In third place on our list of the best futures brokers are Admirals. A multi-regulated broker created over 20 years ago, it is increasingly popular in France to trade CFDs and buy more than 5,000 stocks and ETFs without leverage to create a highly diversified portfolio.

Regarding futures, the broker offers to trade futures contracts in the form of CFDs. Admirals offer, for example, 11 futures CFDs on commodities, 23 futures CFDs on indices and 2 futures CFDs on bonds.

In order to exploit opportunities in the futures market, you can use different versions of the popular MetaTrader trading platform which is one of the best trading platforms in the industry. In order to make your trading even easier and to offer you the best, Admirals offers the possibility of using the Supreme Edition of MetaTrader or StereoTrader on MetaTrader.

The Supreme Edition allows, for example, to take advantage of advanced technical indicators or professional analyzes from Trading Central. StereoTrader provides access to a more professional environment such as advanced stock market order types or a more functional trading panel.

The Admiral’s Futures broker is also a good choice for those who want to take advantage of live trading sessions, numerous educational videos, a wide variety of educational articles, podcasts or even free training. The broker is, in fact, very active in offering educational content dedicated to the Trading markets in different forms. You can also enjoy professional customer service with them.

At the level of the minimum amount to be able to start trading with Admirals, it is reasonable since you can open a Trading account with only 100€. In addition, you can use a wide choice of supply methods.

Regarding the costs of trading on futures, it will be necessary to take into account the spread, but also the financing costs if you keep your positions overnight. For example, the typical spread is 0.04 on the CFD Futures WTI, 1.8 on the CFD Futures CAC 40, 0.36 on the CFD Futures Gold, 0.1 on the CFD Futures VIX and 0.06 on the CFD Futures 10 -year US Treasury Note.

5.  eToro

In the last position in our ranking of the best futures brokers, we find the favourite broker of beginner traders: eToro. This multi-regulated Israeli broker founded in 2007 is indeed the most popular for those who want to take advantage of social trading and copy-trading so as not to trade alone in front of their screens.

With eToro, you can trade CFDs on a multitude of assets and invest in stocks, ETFs and cryptocurrencies without leverage to create a real investment portfolio. eToro is not the ideal broker if you want to trade many futures, since it only offers a limited range of CFD Futures on indices, bonds and commodities.

The strong point of the broker is its 100% online and easy-to-use Trading platform which offers users the opportunity to communicate with other Traders, read Trading ideas from the community or do copy-Trading. , that is to say, to automatically copy the trading positions of other more experienced traders who have developed a profitable trading strategy.

If you want to open a trading account with eToro, the minimum deposit amount depends on your location. Users from France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Monaco for example can start with $100. There are no deposit fees, but conversion fees apply since the base currency of the account is USD.

If you wish to fund your account by bank transfer, be aware that the minimum amount is $500. For more efficient management of your deposits and withdrawals on eToro, you can consider eToro Money which is similar to a mobile app-based e-money account with the ability to use a Visa debit card in some regions.

The lowest possible spreads at eToro are 2 pips minimum on Sugar Futures CFDs, 20 pips minimum on Futures Cotton CFDs, 200 pips on Futures CFDs on Cocoa, 0.15 pips on Futures VIX CFDs and 0.04 points on CFD Futures 10-year US Treasury Note.

6. WH SelfInvest

Created in 1998, WH Selfinvest is one of the best Luxembourg futures brokers available n the market. In addition to Forex, Index, Bond and Commodity futures contracts with real-time tick-by-tick quotes, WH SelfInvest also offers Forex and CFD trading, as well as investing in unleveraged stocks and ETFs.

To open a futures trading account with the broker WH SelfInvest, you must transfer at least €5,000 or the equivalent in GBP, USD or CHF. To make a transfer, you will have to pay a fee of €5 if your amount is less than €30,000 (0.10% beyond (maximum €50)).

The fees for trading futures largely depend on the pack chosen and your trading frequency (Free Quotes Pack, Intra-day Pack, CQG Trader Pack or VWD Trader Pack). You must also take into account the real-time data costs on the stock exchanges if they are not included in your pack such as 20€ for Eurex, 35€ for CME, 55€ for Euronext, 129€ for Liffe, 139€ for ICE US and €145 for ICE Europe.

To trade more than 10,000 financial instruments, the broker WH SelfInvest offers the NanoTrader Trading platform (in the Free version and in the Full version) which allows you to carry out all Trading styles such as scalping, day Trading, swing Trading or even automated trading for example. It is also possible to combine several strategies or activate those available in the WHS Strategies folder of NanoTrader.

To make its platform user-friendly, the broker offers many features and tries to integrate (or program) as much as possible its users’ requests for trading tools such as trading space buttons or execution visible directly in the graph for example. It is also possible to take advantage of SignalRadar, TechScan, ready-to-use strategies, detection of graphic configurations, Trading store or screeners among others.

In addition to NanoTrader, WH SelfInvest can also link your WH SelfInvest trading account to ATAS, Volfix, NinjaTrader, MultiCharts, Trade Navigator and Sierra Charts.

What you must remember

Incorporating futures into your trading expands the trading opportunities you can take advantage of by exploiting a wide range of markets, high liquidity and high leverage to maximize your return potential. These instruments are however complex and risky, and may not be suitable for all Traders. It is therefore important to understand them well before integrating them and/or following a trading course.

To make the best choice among the best futures brokers that we have presented to you, it is important to first consider your trading needs according to your trading style and strategy. Then, you will have to take into account the assets available, the trading platforms and tools offered, the fees or the availability of customer service in your time zone to determine the best futures broker for you.

The best Futures brokers of 2023 are:

1. Interactive Brokers
2. Saxo Bank
3. Degiro
4. Admirals (Admiral Markets)
5. eToro
6. WH Self Invest

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