[Dustinp]

I have waited for some time to reply to this thread making sure that all possible solutions were explored before accepting defeat, so to speak. However, what’s done is done and my attorneys have advised me to move on as the fight with Interbank is a lost battle.

I know there are many that are upset with this situation and my words will probably fall on deaf ears however, this is what actually led to some of the accounts getting a margin call and others sustaining deep drawdowns.

I have been an IB with InterbankFX for some time and I had a bunch of business there. Late last year Interbank began having issues with the money management software and some of our trades were getting misallocated among the different accounts. Because we use very low leverage, our operating account, which is an account that shows the total P/L etc., did not show a substantial drawdown. It was not until we received calls from a few of our clients telling us that their accounts were drawn down that we knew there was a problem.

We contacted Interbank and after several months of going back and forth they said they understood there was a misallocation but we waited too long to tell them about it so they were refusing to fix it. Of course this made no sense to me as it was not going to cost them anything it was merely going to spread the existing loss or gain evenly across the accounts. We even had all our clients sign documentation giving us authority to change any allocation errors on their accounts in these circumstances. Despite this effort and thousands in attorney fees we got nowhere.

Because of this unacceptable handling of our client accounts, I stopped sending InterbankFX business until they fixed it as I could no longer refer people to them in good conscious knowing what they had done, especially knowing that some people were losing everything in some cases. When I stopped sending them business this opened a whole new issue up. InterbankFX was paying me thousands of dollars a month in IB fees for self-trader clients that I had referred to them (not related to the Managed account) and I was now no longer sending them business and this upset them.

I knew this decision would cost me 15 to 20k a month if they ever terminated my contract with them. However, my clients are more important than the money I was receiving. The managed account was still there as we were in the long term AUD/USD trade (which I might add I just closed out of on my personal accounts for around 36% gain. I say that to answer the accusations that the trading itself was poor.) and until we moved the managed account I assumed it would be business as usual.

Despite the negative impact it had on the clients, InterbankFX created policy stating I had to be registered as an IB with the NFA by a certain date or they would terminate my agreement. This was a way for them to keep the millions of dollars in equity from the self traded accounts that I had sent them without paying me for it. Again not related at all to the managed accounts but played a major role in what happened.

I would like to add that we started the registration process around 8 months prior to this and had done our part. We were already approved as a CTA but not as an IB. We were awaiting the NFA to approve us and Interbank knew the deadline they had set could not be met.

Once the deadline was set I was told that I needed to close all positions by a certain date, as a manager it was reckless to close all the open positions as the Aussie was nearing its high and I was confident that it would soon start its retracement.

I told Interbank that I would not close the trades and that they should allow me to continue to manage them and that I would do so for free if need be. After they declined this I suggested at the minimum they allow the account owners to manage the accounts on their own if they wanted to. Interbank agreed to this but it did not help those that were overleveraged. Once the deadline had past InterbankFX took control of the accounts from me without giving the client immediate control so there were many accounts that were running for weeks without anyone being able to manage them.

Prior to the deadline I suggested to those that were tight on margin to close the trade if it broke the high and to those that were leveraged properly to hold through the swing. All this happened about 3 weeks before the dollar rally where all the trades turned extremely profitable.

I have no problem with people telling their side of the story but it is crucial that everyone knows exactly what occurred and that each is basing their statement off of facts and not opinions of what they think happened. There are many negative remarks made towards me as a trader and my support staff in this thread however the reality is last year I made around 90% on all accounts and if the allocation issue had not happened and the accounts were able to stay under my management they would be at the same place as the accounts that I am still managing that were part of this whole issue. Those accounts are up around 36% on equity.

Regarding my support staff, I was advised to keep the information we released limited until our attorney had worked through the entire situation and this came across as if we were trying to hide info but the reality is Interbank was changing things so quickly I did not want to release any info until I was sure that it was fact.

Additionally, to those that lost money, we have offered to manage their account without charging a performance fee until we make back the loss despite the fact I do not feel the loss was a product of my trading but of Interbank’s actions.

Those of you that own a business know that these situations are very difficult and sometimes all you can do is move on. I hope that most can see through these negative comments and see the reality in it. I hold character and integrity in high regards.

Felix himself thought I was a scam at one time and after months of my products being successful he has came out and wrote quite a bit about the legitimacy of my business. In addition my company has a 4 star rating on this review site and that is not based on 3 reviews. At the time I am writing this we have over 40 dating back to 2006 so I am not new to this game. The link is

http://www.forexpeacearmy.com/public/review/www.forexmastermaker.com

Before I close I want to address one more issue that was discussed on this thread. That would be my fees and the allegations that I was churning the account. The reason I charge a 50% performance fee is because I can, when you make traders 90% in a year they are happy to pay you half of that because that is still over 10 times what they would typically get in a checking account and over 3 or 4 times what they would get from a decent performing mutual fund.

Regarding the PIP rebates; I swing trade meaning my positions are held for many months at times. With that said it should be pretty obvious that 1 pip times x accounts doesn’t add up when you are only doing it every 2 or 3 months. Just look at the reports posted to this thread and you will see that I am clearly not churning. Additionally a pip charge is pretty standard as well in the Forex industry for managed accounts.

The maintenance fee of 2% a year is industry standard also.

To close, I feel horrible for those that ended up losing their accounts, however the bottom line is the forex has many risks and they are not just related to trading. This is a good example of the less considered risks i.e platform issues and lack of broker cooperation. I only hope that all traders that enter into any kind of trading activity be it self trading or a managed account do so understanding the risks involved and only use risk capitol when investing with a manager or trading on their own as it is possible for some or all of your account to be lost.

Kind Regards,

Dustin Pass