Should FPA expand traders court to other scams?

[4evermaat]

I wasn't sure which community forum to put this poll. There were 2 scam alerts recently:

https://www.forexpeacearmy.com/community/threads/ic-markets-scammed-me-today.48565/
https://www.forexpeacearmy.com/comm...sed-my-opened-positions-on-the-weekend.48429/

Pepperstone case is particularly insidious: Trades blatantly cancelled while the market was closed?

It got me thinking: How could a trader's court case not be allowed for these cases? I found out later that due to current rules, only spot forex currency pairs, CFDs on forex pairs, and binary options based on forex pairs qualify (I assume this includes gold and silver No, it doesn't. Forex pairs only.). So the only reason it was not "court-eligible" is because of the technicality of it being a CFD. So......

I propose to allow certain CFDs to be eligible for FPA traders court. CFDs trade identically to how spot forex pairs trade, except market hours of operation are not always 24/5. They may have breaks during the day and close on certain holidays.

Because CFDs could theoretically be created on just about any derivative, a limit might need to be placed to the most active ones. Like CFDs imitating all major stock market indices (s&p 500, ftse100, Dax30, IT40, etc, and specific commodities like Crude Oil). A quick look at Dukascopy shows that there are 13 major stock indices and 2 versions of Crude oil. I checked at a PoP broker and they had about 13 or 14 CFDs symbols. I also checked IC Markets as they have the most CFDs I've seen from a 'ECN-claiming' broker and it is about 26 there, including crop commodities soybean, corn, etc). It would be unreasonable to try and cover all single stocks and all commodities.

Another rule may require the broker to also offer at least 8 spot forex pairs on the same platform as the CFDs, in which at least 4 of them are major crosses (like EURUSD). This would help to verify that they are actually dealing with spot forex trading, and offer CFDs as an additional offering.

By including these CFDs to make them court-eligible, it makes it possible for traders who would otherwise qualify for a court case if the symbol been a forex pair to now take offending broker to FPA traders court and a chance of receiving some justice.

I hope this is made a sticky as I believe the feedback could promote justice for a lot more people.

 

[AsstModerator]

Note: I've edited the title of this thread to something more neutral. No one would vote against "Getting Justice". Before any says this is unfair, I believe the title "Should the FPA dilute its focus, vote on things that few have any expertise on, and give AsstMod the choice of resigning or dying of overwork?" would be a far more accurate title.


The FPA staff and many members are familiar with the price action of forex pairs. Cases involving binary and CFD brokers are permitted, but only for trade disputes involving withdrawals or involving trades of forex pairs. If something unusual happens with beef futures or shares of IBM, very few people here would have the knowledge to distinguish between what would and would not be considered to be a scam.

Who's going to select which popular stocks and indices are added? Once one comes in, it wouldn't be fair to exclude the others.

Please remember, the FPA is a free service. Many of the biggest contributors do what they can for free. Although you may open a Scam Alerts thread for a non-forex item, the Traders Court has limits.

Where will this end? Once we cover CFDs on stock offered by a forex broker, will the FPA be expected to get into cases between Account Executives at licensed stock brokerages and their clients? Will it go from tradable instruments to money? If so, how many of us know what's a fair rate on a mortgage in over 100 countries?

Once any expansion takes place, who's going to do all the behind the scenes work which I do for every filed case? I'm already well past any reasonable limit in the number of hours I work per week. Is someone going to pay the salary of the "Court Baliff" I'd have to hire? If no one's willing to pay for this do you expect me to work another 5 or 10 hours per week? I've already got doctors hounding me to take it easier before this job kills me. I've already been in the hospital once because of this job. If I'm getting 5 or 10 more hours per week dumped on me, I'll resign immediately.

Until someone is willing to write the equivalent of Forex Military School for Stocks, Bonds, Commodities, and anything else you expect the FOREX Peace Army to cover, and the majority of members have taken such a course, any vote for trades involving these instruments would really be a "guilty because it's a broker" vote.

I would prefer to shut the whole Traders Court System down than to see the focus be diluted and the votes become meaningless.

 

[Pharaoh]

I addressed this issue in someone's Scam Alerts thread recently. That person thought that anything streamed through a popular forex trading platform should be valid for Traders Court. I see AsstMod borrowed a few ideas from it in his post, but I want the full text of mine to be on display in this thread, so here it is:
:
...Just because something is streamed through the same platform doesn't give the FPA the levels of information needed to evaluate price action on all possible tradable instruments. Also, since you are talking about the platform, are you ready to tell people who trade on some broker-specific platform that the FPA can't help them since they aren't using MT4/5, CTrader, or some other well known platform?

Binary gambling on currency only barely made it in under the wire by convincing so many people they were "trading" forex.

Are you personally ready to evaluate a gap in Wheat Futures? How about the DE30? Do you personally know how market open affects it? What about after-hours trading of NYSE stocks? How about OTC stocks? Copper contracts? Ready to step up to the plate on all the finer details of trading them?

Where would it end? Only trading, or would it extend to all forms of investment? Mortgage contracts? Roth IRAs? How about online gambling like sports betting (involves many of the same people behind the scenes as forex and binary options)? Maybe the FPA should also investigate unlawful lending practices too? Mission creep is an ugly thing. There is no end to how far it extends once you start linking in things outside the primary scope of the mission.

AsstMod put in the "forex-only" rule is that this is the Forex Peace Army. If Traders Court is opened to every type of trading, there we'd all be trying to vote on problems with stock brokers, options (real, not binary) brokers, metal dealers, etc., etc. Are there enough FPA members out there who can make an evaluation of what is normal, unusual, or plain scam on a huge variety of non-forex products to make any vote on the subject meaningful?


I suspect that Lan Pham may very well have been screwed over by his broker, but I don't have enough data on most non-forex trading instruments to make a Guilty/Not Guilty call.

 

[AsstModerator]

I believe there is an important fact everyone should be aware of.

Disputes with forex, CFD, and binary brokers over failure to process a withdrawal are valid. There are no restrictions based on what was being traded. This has been the rule since the Traders Court opened.

What is not covered are disputes over trades for items which were not currency pairs. This was carefully planned before the Traders Court began in order to prevent the FPA from losing its focus on retail forex trading and from having votes on things that few staff or members would be able to fairly evaluate. Holding such votes would not be justice.

 

[oscarra]

The Team says FOREX COURT so its FOREX ONLY !

CFD’s are definitely getting very popular, in fact some Brokers offer over 6000 stocks to be traded
with cfd’s, in general allowing a leverage of 1:10 which sure gives a lot of trading power.

Last time the eur/chf pair showed a rough move, it nearly whipped out a whole bunch of Forex Traders and Brokers, funny all traded the wrong direction

On the stock markets you see these moves all the time, so most important is to be damn sure that the Broker is strongly regulated which should allow solving of conflicts.

 

[4evermaat]

I underestimated the workload required to do this. I would still like to see a select index and oil cfds covered as specified above. But i certainly do not want FPA to break their necks doing this. So i do apologize if i came across as insensitive earlier. This is no fault of FPA, and at least we have scam alert. It will be interesting to see how regulator handle the case.

The brazen-ness of the very recent Pepperstone case and thinking about how it could happen again largely fueled my decision to write this poll. Unfortunately, some forex brokers who also offer a few index cfds who might have used more restraint may be embolded to rip off client knowing there will be less or no backlash IMO.

I believe there is an important fact everyone should be aware of.

Disputes with forex, CFD, and binary brokers over failure to process a withdrawal are valid. There are no restrictions based on what was being traded. This has been the rule since the Traders Court opened.

What is not covered are disputes over trades for items which were not currency pairs. This was carefully planned before the Traders Court began in order to prevent the FPA from losing its focus on retail forex trading and from having votes on things that few staff or members would be able to fairly evaluate. Holding such votes would not be justice.

What is considered a spot forex pair for traders court? XAUUSD AND XAGUSD are spot versions of gold and silver, which is different than a commodity cfd on gold/silver. Are these included?

 

[profit.erol]

It is important topic. Because %99 of forex firms are offering CFDs and forex products together. So if there is an issue about CFDs positions, we can face same issues for forex positions. And Forex Peace Army should not care about clients' positions are opened which product etc. They care about brokers. If I have problem with brokers which canceled my profitable positions on indices, it means they can also do it for currencies. It is not fair procedure.

 

[oscarra]

Your case seems to be with the Uk FOS, so you need to wait for it’s outcome.

https://register.fca.org.uk/ShPo_FirmDetailsPage?id=001b000000nQHG2AAO

Effective From 05/08/2015

best is stick to long time around company’s,
In little time these guys already seem to cause some trouble

 

[oscarra]

https://www.fca.org.uk/news/press-releases/fca-proposes-stricter-rules-contract-difference-products

The FCA’s analysis of a representative sample of client accounts for CFD firms found that 82% of clients lost money on these products.

definitely trading needs to remain very careful, also to watch for eventual wrong doings of regulated brokers