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Problem IC Markets SCAM ($43,450 LOSS)

I am having an issue with a company
Hi
Pheniox123,
are you trading or gambling?whats the hell when you trade full margin? why?

I finding it very strange that this is your FIRST post :rolleyes:... I mean surely you could have wasted your time somewhere else.

I didn’t use my full margin and this is the point here. ICmarkets did some trickery to ensure my margin is exhausted in order to cash in on my balance. FYI out of the $43,450 more than half of it was PROFIT (so no I wasn’t gambling but thank you and welcome to the forum).
 
I love the attitude...

"the ICmarkets defacto defence teams on here"

and he's so wrong...

There is no attitude here...all I said was I don’t want to get into a pointless fight with members when my fight is with ICMARKETS. I do apologise if your intentions were pure and genuine but again no one knows what happened on that night except the broker.
 
Thank you Forexteamau...you truly show showed me light and I am for ever grateful for your courage and self belief. Like you said; this is between me and ICmarkets.
@Pheniox123 No worries mate. So far you have proven that you are their genuine client. Had a live trading account. I don't know how much was your initial investment but your account shows you lost $43000.

That means you had $43000 cash in this financial crisis. You are entitled to complain and ask broker for logical explanation.Most of us make our judgments based on what comes to our mind easily. It's your first hand experience.
 
I do not want further responses from the ICmarkets defacto defence teams on here and will be inviting ICmarkets formally once our current discussions are finalised with them.

Thank you.
Well that's a bit disappointing. When I last looked this was a public discussion forum and you don't get to choose who makes comments. It's tough if you don't like what is being said.

I am truly sorry you feel the members here are fighting with you. That is absolutely not the case. You have made a public accusation and that accusation has to stand the test of public scrutiny, or else what would be the point?

I see you are on the same bandwagon as forexteamau. You are making claims that simply show that you do not understand the market you are operating in. The broker can, and does, change leverage.....whenever they like.....ALL brokers do it. You can shout "scam" from the highest building if you like but you agreed to it in the terms and conditions. Do yourself a favour and go do some research on why it would be beneficial for a broker to reduce leverage. Try and understand why it happens and learn to work with it. Next week, I will go as far as writing an EA for you guys that will report all leverage changes on your platform. How is that for a deal. All I ask for is that you come back and explain why a broker changes leverage and, no the answer is not to scam you.

The same goes for swaps. They change regularly. It's not a scam, it is simply the way it is. It would be worth your while to go study what swaps are and why they might change.

If you want to claim price manipulation that might be a more cogent argument and you even showed a chart. Did you bother to compare with other brokers to see if the pricing was unreasonable. You can claim unreasonable spread as well, as one chap did recently. Also fair enough, we might not agree on what represents an unreasonable spread but at least that is an argument I can stand. He was also trading GBPJPY(with a different broker), so there is something to consider for the future.

If you want to understand why you can run into problems with hedged trades I leave you with this little demo trade I did yesterday.....you may remember I stated that your % margin means nothing when it comes to hedged trades
Screenshot 2020-07-17 12.18.41.png


You will see that I loaded up 100 lots of buy and 100 lots of sell for a total of 200 lots. This required 0 margin, so I opened a 1 lot buy trade, which required $200. Because of this $200, my margin % sits at 1800% which should be plenty, right? Can you guess what happened when the spread widened? You don't have to here is the result :-
Screenshot 2020-07-18 14.01.46.png

I did increase the lots a bit more to 125 per side because I didn't want to wait all night for the margin call. You can however see that I only ever had 1 lot of unbalanced exposure, not that it made any difference....I did it to demonstrate that margin % can be misleading.......you can have massive exposure with a high margin % The margin call occurred when the spread hit 810 points.

Anyway, enough of that, you can take all of this as defacto defense of IC markets, of you can take it as useful information and try to understand it. None of this discussion takes away from your right to have the broker and regulator answer you questions.

I will make you one promise though.....brokers will be changing leverage and swaps next year. Will you still be fighting it or will you be making money trading because you have learnt how to beat them at their own game?
 
That means you had $43000 cash in this financial crisis.
That is not quite correct. By his own admission, he had $7000 - $10 000 equity left. That represents $33 000 loss that he did to himself. The broker didn't do it. I have said it before, and I will repeat it......balance means nothing........equity is all that matters. If You have a $10 000 balance and an open trade of -$5000, you have $5000, not $10 000.
 
Well that's a bit disappointing. When I last looked this was a public discussion forum and you don't get to choose who makes comments. It's tough if you don't like what is being said.

I am truly sorry you feel the members here are fighting with you. That is absolutely not the case. You have made a public accusation and that accusation has to stand the test of public scrutiny, or else what would be the point?

I see you are on the same bandwagon as forexteamau. You are making claims that simply show that you do not understand the market you are operating in. The broker can, and does, change leverage.....whenever they like.....ALL brokers do it. You can shout "scam" from the highest building if you like but you agreed to it in the terms and conditions. Do yourself a favour and go do some research on why it would be beneficial for a broker to reduce leverage. Try and understand why it happens and learn to work with it. Next week, I will go as far as writing an EA for you guys that will report all leverage changes on your platform. How is that for a deal. All I ask for is that you come back and explain why a broker changes leverage and, no the answer is not to scam you.

The same goes for swaps. They change regularly. It's not a scam, it is simply the way it is. It would be worth your while to go study what swaps are and why they might change.

If you want to claim price manipulation that might be a more cogent argument and you even showed a chart. Did you bother to compare with other brokers to see if the pricing was unreasonable. You can claim unreasonable spread as well, as one chap did recently. Also fair enough, we might not agree on what represents an unreasonable spread but at least that is an argument I can stand. He was also trading GBPJPY(with a different broker), so there is something to consider for the future.

If you want to understand why you can run into problems with hedged trades I leave you with this little demo trade I did yesterday.....you may remember I stated that your % margin means nothing when it comes to hedged tradesView attachment 55828

You will see that I loaded up 100 lots of buy and 100 lots of sell for a total of 200 lots. This required 0 margin, so I opened a 1 lot buy trade, which required $200. Because of this $200, my margin % sits at 1800% which should be plenty, right? Can you guess what happened when the spread widened? You don't have to here is the result :-
View attachment 55829
I did increase the lots a bit more to 125 per side because I didn't want to wait all night for the margin call. You can however see that I only ever had 1 lot of unbalanced exposure, not that it made any difference....I did it to demonstrate that margin % can be misleading.......you can have massive exposure with a high margin % The margin call occurred when the spread hit 810 points.

Anyway, enough of that, you can take all of this as defacto defense of IC markets, of you can take it as useful information and try to understand it. None of this discussion takes away from your right to have the broker and regulator answer you questions.

I will make you one promise though.....brokers will be changing leverage and swaps next year. Will you still be fighting it or will you be making money trading because you have learnt how to beat them at their own game?

Thank you for your long message and explanation. I wish I had enough time on my hands to go on everyone’s post about ICmarket and defend them free of charge...you must be a genius at forex that you have all this free time to be a Good Samaritan on behalf of the brokers (specifically ICmarkets).

I will fight on but thanks ;)
 
Thank you for your long message and explanation. I wish I had enough time on my hands to go on everyone’s post about ICmarket and defend them free of charge...you must be a genius at forex that you have all this free time to be a Good Samaritan on behalf of the brokers (specifically ICmarkets).

I will fight on but thanks ;)
Well, in that case, good luck. I know how this story ends......
 
Quick update:

I have sent them my formal complaint last week and yet to receive response.

By the way, which email address do you use to reach their compliance department? Is it this: compliance@icmarkets.sc ? This is the email address I used (although it seems weird that their compliance is in seychelles while they are supposed to be in Australia). I will give them till end of this week and if no response is received then I will escalate further.

Thanks and will keep you all posted.
 
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