FUTURES UNDERSTANDING YOUR ACCOUNT STATEMENT. WH SELFINVEST Est Luxemburg, France, Belgium, Poland, Germany, Netherlands

Transcription

1 FUTURES UNDERSTANDING YOUR ACCOUNT STATEMENT WH SELFINVEST Est Luxemburg, France, Belgium, Poland, Germany, Netherlands Copyrigh : all rights attached to this guide are the sole property of WH SelfInvest S.A. Reproduction and/or transmission of this guide by whatever means is not allowed without the explicit permission of WH SelfInvest. Disclaimer: this guide is purely informational in nature and can in no way be construed as a suggestion or proposal to invest in the financial instruments mentioned. Persons who do decide to invest in these financial instruments acknowledge they do so solely based on their own decission and risks. Alle information contained in this guide comes from sources considered reliable. The accuracy of the information, howerver, is not guaranteed.

2 UNDERSTANDING YOUR FUTURES ACCOUNT STATEMENT The following pages explain how to read your futures account statement. Reading a futures account statement isn t always easy. We strongly advise you to invest some time in learning to understand how to read your account statement. It is important to clearly understand your account situation at all times. Pages 1 to 3 show an example: an account is funded and starts trading. If you understand this example you will be able to read your own account statement. Pages 4 to 5 show some non-trade related events which might appear on your account statement.

3 DAY 1 THE ACCOUNT IS FUNDED Account ZMXXX has been funded with 11,995 on November 14 th The statement dated November 14 th is received the next morning by . The Open Positions section shows your positions kept overnight. Total Equity is what your account is worth. You can have money in different currencies on your account. NETT EUR is an indicative value in Euros which combines all currencies on your account. Note: the example account only has one currency, EUR. Therefore the amounts in both columns are identical. Net Liquidating Value is the money you have available to serve as margin for buying/selling futures contracts.

4 DAY 1 THE ACCOUNT IS FUNDED Account ZMXXX has been funded with 11, on November 14 th The statement dated November 14 th is received the next morning by . This is page 2 of the statement. It details the trades placed and the settlements made. Brought Forward Balance. This is the amount of money in the account at the end of the day, yesterday, 13 th November. The closing balance of yesterday is always the opening balance today. In this example the money came into the account on 14 th November. Therefore the opening balance is 0. CR is credit. A credit is an amount added to your account. An amount deducted from the account will show as DR, a debit. There is a Trading Advice and Settlement Statement for each individual currency in which you have traded during the month. The total at the bottom of the page is for the currency in question only.

5 DAY 2 THE ACCOUNT EXECUTES A TRADE A few days later, on 24 th November, the account trades. 1 CAC40 is bought and sold. The date of the statement is 24 th November. It details what happened on the account on 24 th November. You receive this statement on the morning of the next day, 25 th November. The Business Done Today section shows the orders that were executed during the day, on 24 th November. In this example, there were 2 trades on the CAC40, a buy and a sell. The commissions that you pay are shown in the column Amount Posted : EUR NFA Fees are the Exchange Fees: EUR The commissions are immediately deducted (remember, DR is a debit) from the money in your account as you can see in the Totals section (remember, this section details the money movements). The Totals section takes as start balance (Brought Forward Balance) the Cash Balance of the previous day (Carried Forward Balance).

6 DAY 3 THE PROFIT OF YESTERDAY IS CREDITED, MORE TRADES ARE EXECUTED The next day, 25 th November, the account trades again. One CAC40 is bought and held overnight. This is page 2 of the Trading Advice and Settlement Statement. Since the position is not closed, profit/loss is not calculated on this page. Only the fees for the trade are deducted from the brought forward balance. Page 1, the Open Position Statement (see next page), calculates the Profit & Loss of the day.

7 DAY 3 THE OPEN POSITION STATEMENT Page 1 of the statement - Open Position Statement- indicates the financial summary. The Open Positions section shows the positions kept overnight on 25 th November. Overnight positions are compensated at a price fixed by the market at market close. Here, the position was opened at 2845 and the compensation price was The profit is therefore +90EUR. This temporary profit (Variation Margins) is added or deducted from the Cash balance, in order to calculate your Buying Power for the next day (Total Equity). Initial Margins indicate the total margin requirement for your overnight positions. Excess / Shortage is the Buying Power remaining, or Margin Call after deduction of overnight margins.

8 In addition to the main events described above you might see the following events on your statement. CONVERSION OF BALANCES Once a month the account balances in other currencies are converted in your base currency. Your base currency is EUR. This account has a credit of USD that will be converted into EUR: The next day. The credit of USD has been converted into EUR. The exchange rate is indicated: Contrary to competitors WHS does NOT charge for money conversions. WHS converts at the middle market rate and therefore does not make money on the spread.

9 QUARTERLY CHARGE Account keeping and administration (Luxemburg based accounts only) WHS charges a quarterly fee of 39 (VAT included) per account per quarter. If your account has only been open for 1 or 2 months you will be charged proportionally. This debit is indicated as quarterly charge on your account statement. DAILY CHECK OF POSITIONS It is important for the trader to check whether operations* have been correctly reported after each day of trading. It is particularly important to check if the positions appearing on your statement and on the platform are consistent with the positions at closing on the previous day. If you notice that trades are missing, too many trades appear on your statement or that the positions on your platform are incorrect, please contact the WHS support desk immediately. NEVER CLOSE A POSITION THAT YOU DO NOT RECOGNISE. Every morning, WHS systematically checks positions and instructs Macquarie to correct positions on the platform if necessary. This procedure is usually done before 9am CET. In order to see the updates, you may need to shut off the platform and log in again. SPECIAL CASE: TRADES ON THE FUTURE CAC40 ON GLOBEX The CAC40 Future contract is tradable from 8am CET to 10pm CET. After 18.30pm CET orders on the Future CAC40 are executed via Globex. Orders executed on Globex are compensated the day after execution of the trade. As a result of this: 1) Account statements Trades on the CAC40 executed on Globex will appear on the statement of the day following the date of the trade. As a result of this, your account statement, which is sent every morning, will reflect the situation as it was on the CAC40 at 18.30pm CET the previous day and not at 10pm CET. Example : a trade on CAC40 Globex executed on Monday 24/7/ 12will appear on your statement of 25/1/12, which will be sent to you on 26/1/12 at 8am CET. {2) Trading platform The platform will show the correct positions, however the result of these trades will NOT appear and cumulated profit/loss and Buying Power might therefore not be correct. Please contact the helpdesk in case of doubt.

10 MARGIN AND OVERNIGHT POSITIONS It is not authorized to keep overnight positions if the Total Equity of the account is below the overnight Initial Margins requirement. Excess/(Shortage) is the difference between the Net Equity value and the overnight margin requirement. Excess/(Shortage) < 0 will result in a Margin Call. In this case WHS has the right to: 1) register the margin call 2) liquidate the positions causing the margin call In all cases the client is responsible for the positions and the P/L they cause. If 3 margin calls are registered within a 180-day period, WHS will increase the intraday margin requirement to the overnight margin rate for a period of 90 days. Should the client receive another margin call within this 90-day period, the overnight margin rate will be kept for another 90 days. CONTRACT EXPIRATIONS Some futures contracts are settled in cash at expiry (CAC, DAX, mini S&P, mini Nasdaq, etc.), other contracts require physical delivery (Crude Oil, Bund, TNote, etc.). It is strictly forbidden to keep a position on a contract that will settle with financial instruments or physical goods on expiration date. The client is responsible for closing his positions before expiration. Clients must know the conditions of settlement at expiry for the contracts they wish to trade. This information can be found on the website of the exchange in question.