Yeah, I got a call from Richard at FX Turtle Trader today. He admitted that GNTFX is trying to resolve issues with their liquidity provider.
The word "admitted" kind of jumped out at me. "Admitted"? Like I was keeping it a secret?
I processed a withdrawal from my account on May 8, which has not arrived and probably never will arrive. I found out on May 28 that no withdrawals had gone out for at least 4 weeks. I immediately removed from my website all direct links to the GNTFX website to prevent people from opening new accounts. Despite that, I suspect that some got through and GNFX did not confirm with me that new clients had opened accounts.
I do know and understand that in the absence of true knowledge of a situation, fantasy can become fact and arrived at conclusions can become monsters under the bed. With this in mind, if you have any questions, you can ask me, and if I know the answer, I will tell you and post it, unless it jeopardizes the recovery of funds from GNTFX.
First, Brian, GNTFX and myself are three different entities.
With the mud that hit the fan at the end of May, there were a lot of emails that went back and forth between GNTFX and myself. GNTFX, I finally learned, set themselves up as a broker back at the end of 2014 / beginning of 2015. What they did not disclose to anyone was they were not a full fledged broker but were simply a White Label, someone affiliated with a broker disguised to look like a real broker. GNTFX signed a deal with a "contractor" whom I suspect was simply an Introducing Broker for Iron FX. GNTFX signed a deal with this "contractor" because he explained to them that GNTFX could get a better deal by going through him rather than dealing directly with Iron FX. In addition to that, he explained to them how they could offer the sign-up bonuses, and so they signed. This "contractor" is the entity to whom GNTFX sent our funds. Not to Iron FX directly, but to a third party. None of this was disclosed on their website or to us.
I do know the name of the contractor and cannot disclose it. There are events taking place to identify and hold people responsible for their actions, and posting the identity of the contractor would simply result in a flood of emails and telephone calls and would simply result in a country like Argentina acquiring a new rich citizen.
Brian Thompson is also a real person. He has no connection to GNTFX other than as a client, just like and I and many members of this forum. He is also the best trader I have ever encountered. I know this because I was the best trader I ever knew before I met Brian. If you want to know a little secret about the forex market, I will tell you, and I won't even have to shoot you all after I tell you.
Ten years ago I was a fund manager just like Brian. I traded through IFX Markets in Boston. I was not permitteded to trade directly on the platform. I had to contact the dealing desk and tell them how many lots I wanted to trade. Mehran on the dealing desk would then place a request on the Inter-Bank platform for, say, 300 lots LONG on the GBP/USD. The Asking prices from the banks would start to appear on the platform and I had 3 seconds to accept or reject a price. As soon as I accepted a price, IFX would then add 2 pips to the price and that price would appear on my trading platform. Closing the trade was the same procedure, and IFX would subtract 2 pips to my exit price. This gave them a profit going in the trade and a profit coming out.
Why did IFX make me trade like this? Because out of their 20,000 clients, I was told I was the only one making money, and if they let me trade directly on the platform, they could be down 2 pips or $50,000 before they could hedge my trade. But enough about me, let's get back to Brian.
When I first met Brian it was through the internet when I set up a Demo account through his FlipSideFX website. Now all the so-called experts who trade forex will tell you that you can't make money trading at low leverage. These people are the ones who all lose their money. The reality is the only way you can make money in forex is by trading
low leverage. There is no other way. I followed Brian for a few months, and I was amazed by the results! He traded LOW LEVERAGE!!!! I showed the results to my wife! I could't believe it! He knew about trading low leverage. ( The maximum leverage he has traded in the last 18 months is 5.34 times the equity in the account )
I contacted Brian through his email and asked him to call me. He did, we chatted, and that was our first meeting. I asked him where he learned how to trade with such low leverage. There was a pause, and he said "Richard, I lost so much money"... I just burst out laughing, and I told him I had lost about $250,000 before I learned the same. I called it my college education in Forex.
A couple of more things:
1) Brian will most probably stop trading at GNTFX as of the end of this week. The only reason Brian continued trading was he did not want to leave clients who had accepted the GNTFX bonus not being able to withdraw their funds because their accounts had not traded the minimum number of lots. Brian has always said to me that if he ever left GNTFX, he would have to stay long enough for every account to have the minimum number of trades to withdraw their funds.
2) Brian Thompson is not his real name. His real name is a much nicer name than Brian Thompson.
The reality is, trading for others is an extremely difficult task, and clients should never be allowed to contact a trader with comments like HOW COME YOU MISSED THE RUN UP ON THE EURO YESTERDAY? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU???... I am not kidding. You stick your head out of the foxhole if you think I am.
Brian and I have also lost our funds at GNTFX. Brian's parents have lost over $300K, and another friend who posts to this forum has lost $907K. so if you think we are not also hurting, you are wrong. I was with Brian on May 28th when we found out that no withdrawals had gone out in over a month. Two weeks previously, a personal friend of Brian's had wired $300,000 to GNTFX, probably never to be seen again, so we are also experiencing a lot of stress at this time.
If GNTFX does somehow come out of this, Brian will most probably trade there for a few months more so that everyone can meet the minimum trading requirements and withdraw their funds, but it would require something close to a miracle. When we found out that GNTFX had sent our funds to 3rd party, I asked him point blank to confirm whether our trades were ever placed on the market. This was Adam's reply on June 10:
_________________________________________________________________
GNTFX support (GNTFX)
Jun 10, 02:06 +07
Richard,
You are welcome. It's a busy job over here at our helpdesk. We are trying to resolve the issue with our liquidity provider while dealing with clients and answering support tickets.
Since the title of the ticket is an honest update let me tell you that
I honestly don't know if the trades where ever put at market or if our liquidity provider was clearing them in-house / betting against the trades.
The set up of GNTFX is pretty simple. We act as the front-desk towards clients, answer to the support tickets and search for skilled traders while our liquidity partner take care of the back-end with filling our clients positions, supplying the software and handling the withdrawals.
All our contact with the liquidity partner is though a 3rd party agent that is taking a part of commissions by connection us to the broker Iron FX under his agreements which will allow a larger bonus as well as GNTFX's name will not show up anywhere as it's all done though his contract.
We have been trying to get answers out from our agent but whatever it's him or Iron FX or both hat is holding back on the withdrawals I am not sure about at the moment.
I am sorry that I can't share more positive news with you as we want to solve this as badly as you and all of our clients wants.
We will keep doing our job trying to find out what is up and down in this case and recover as much funds as possible.
Regards,
Adam from GNTFX support
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At this point, all we can do is work on a solution. We are seriously working on setting up our own brokerage with DMA, or Direct Market Access to the Inter-Bank market. Clients funds will be held in a Segregated Account and these funds will be held by ourselves and not by any 3rd party.
Clients who wish to trade for themselves will be trading on the MT4 platform where the BID and the ASK prices are the best prices offered by 13 different banks. The BID you see may be from Barclay's while the ASK price may be from HSBC, but you will not see which Bank is offering what. It will simply be the best BID and ASK price available. But the important this is you will be trading directly with the banks without a B level broker manipulating the prices between you and the market.
Brian will be trading on the Inter-Bank platform where he can see all the BIDS and the ASK prices. Individual clients can also trade on this platform, but it requires a minimum deposit of $500,000 to trade on this platform. Not easy, but possible.
Trade reports will also show the equity in the Managed Accounts and any open positions will be disclosed. No overnight positions will ever be held.
In addition to this, we will be setting aside each month a percentage of the profits generated by the brokerage to reimburse our clients who have lost funds at GNTFX up to the total amount they have deposited at GNTFX minus any withdrawals. We will at least make people square with the equity they sent in, even if we did not take it.
Clients will open an account and on any given month we will deposit the same amount in all client accounts. This amount will vary month to month based on the profit generated by the brokerage. As clients reach their initial equity deposit at GNTFX, they will be dropped from the spreadsheet, and the amount deposited the next month should increase since the funds available are now divided by fewer clients. We will continue doing this until all clients are made square.
When clients have a minimum equity of $2,000 in their accounts, they can choose to have Brian trade their account as before, or they may trade their account themselves on the MT4 platform.
We will not be offering any bonuses of any kind at any time. We will be charging a performance fee on the managed accounts of 20% of the profits on a monthly basis calculated from the previous month's high-watermark.
Self traders who request a withdrawal will have their funds in their bank accounts within 72 hours, and managed account clients will be able to withdraw funds from their accounts on the 1st of each month also to be received within 72 hours.
If you have any questions about GNTFX you can contact me, and If I know the answer I will tell you. I personally cannot believe anything GNTFX tells me anymore and I urge you not to believe anything they tell you either.
Richard Cliche
richard@fxturtletrader.com