I've been trading futures for the last 2 months actually. Ameritrade gave me permission to do so. I was not asking a hypothetical question. The downside is that they charge me $2.57 commission per option contract instead of $.25 and that adds up in a hurry. That's not what I was asking though, I wasn't asking for a method of making winning trades or if there was some accounting scheme I could use to hack the system, I was just asking if trades in futures and options in futures would add to the cost basis and proceeds totals even though they're on a different statement, this "1099-B" form. So for instance after about 1 month trading futures options since I've tried to switch over to them instead of regular stocks and options because I was worried about the 10 million dollar limit, I've gained about 10 thousand dollars in the /ES (S&P 500 futures). Pretty good, right? Except it involved about 150 options contracts (adding up to ~400$ of commissions, not cool for it to cut that much into the profit). The total cost basis is probably about 100 thousand dollars, and the proceeds, 110 thousand dollars, I'd estimate, if I went over the history and added up the total of the options bought and sold (and expired short and long). The question is, with the statement I get at the end, is that just going to show as a 10 thousand dollar profit? Or is that going to actually come to me as an additional 100 thousand dollars added to my cost basis and an additional 110 thousand dollars added to my proceeds? Because if it's counted the same as regular stocks, I had better stop trading the futures as there's no advantage to them whatsoever, all they do is be incredibly inefficient with exorbitant commissions and I might as well trade options in etfs for the same indices that carry much lower commissions, or the NDX options. I'm suspicious the answer is yes, it counts the same as stocks. It doesn't make THAT much difference. I've been trying to unwind my positions in it anyway, also because this ridiculous stock market bubble is obviously on its last legs and I don't want to be left without a chair when the music stops when it crashes (another reason to use option spreads with very short expiration dates, it's functionally similar to a stop loss).
