Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
That's true. Most of my trades now are fairly relaxed semi algo 50 -100 tick swing trades using limit orders or stop market orders queued well in advance. Slippage on triggered stops seems in line with the norms for the liquid instruments I trade.
The IB feed is poor so I use AMP's zenfire which I'm completely satisfied with. For executions I've noticed no difference between AMP and IB. I used to use TOS for options which was erratic but seems to have become stable under TD ownership. Wally said the executions are good at TOS. I've read your posts on how being close to the exchange helps quite a bit with latency and see how this would be important for shorter time frame traders using predominantly market orders.
Yeah, I noticed the strange timing on the Power of Attorney mentioned in the bankruptcy filing - it was dated July 3rd. Sr knew that the regulator was getting suspicious about PFG not using electronics verification and she would finally pick up the phone and call the bank to confirm funds. BTW, the NFA regulators were not concerned about verifying funds via snail mail to a major bank that uses a PO Box in Cedar Falls, Iowa?
The facts are pointing toward Sr committing fraud for two years, but could he do so without Jr's being aware? If Jr was involved, how could they expect to get away with this scheme? Their records won't be audited by a one person firm operating out of a spare bedroom, now will they?
Jr: "Gosh, I had no idea at all - in fact I sent our employees a glowing letter just one day before the ."
I wonder how they will divide up the assets between futures accounts and forex accounts. In the discussion regarding Tradestation insurance, their statements were that for futures accounts TS was required to maintain segregated accounts and reserve, while the forex section only mentioned the reserve requirement. Are forex funds required to be maintained in segregated accounts as well? If not are the futures traders in a slightly better position? Damn! How far down does this rabbit hole go?
I think their 2011 RCG financial statement should be carefully read. It's public so I can attach. RCG drown 25 million from the line credit (for what ?). RCG had proprietary trades losses. Finally what is written in the notes .4 (page 11) is somewhat ambiguous. I am not a statement expert but many here know how to read it between the rows.
I am not up on the latest regs, but forex is un regulated for the most part. They do not have central clearing so the broker just needs to keep enough to satisfy the CFTC (RFED )and the banks that they are trading with.
Unfortunately this is the internet where professional credentials and backgrounds are not required to offer profound accounting and legal opinions ad nauseum ....
I'm just a simple man trading a simple plan.
My daddy always said, "Every day above ground is a good day!"
We organize a mass campaign with thousands of retail traders and schedule a week (across all known forums), in which we all pull out all our money out of our brokerage accounts (whether futures, securities or forex) and transfer it to our regular bank accounts.
That way, the weak brokers and the fraudulent ones will probably collapse and the good and strong ones are filtered.
Though, I don't know whether one week is enough for this, but I'm sure that this would have an impact. At least, the companies would start to take their self-regulation finally serious. I would be willing to do this even for a month (take a holiday, do something else in the meantime... I know, this might be difficult for some ).
What do you think?
I mean, what else can we do?
The suggestion to spread your capital across many brokers in order to spread your risk might make sense from an individual point of view. But in the aggregate, that way the weak and fraudulent ones are only kept alive longer, as they get also money from new accounts opened by traders from other brokers.
The problem with that, is that one medium sized hedge fund probably has an account balance equal to 1,000 well funded typical retail traders.
And they aren't going to do as you suggest, because they need to be in the market every day.
So in other words, the impact of retail money alone wouldn't be enough.
I think, first and foremost, don't over-react.
Put pressure on your FCM but I would put just as much, if not much more, pressure on your Congressman. Because that is where the real solution needs to come from, in terms of SIPC type insurance for futures accounts.
You are right Mike with the hedge funds. On the other hand, brokers which have also a decent amount of hedge fund money, and hence, are not impacted by such campaign, might be the more secure brokers anyway.
I assume that the smart money is not only smart when it comes to participation in the markets but also when it comes to broker selection. At least smarter than we retailers are...
I would have agreed to your statement to not over-react after the MF Global incident, but now, from my point of view there can be no such thing as over-reaction.