Be aware Tickmil UK LTD commits FRAUDE (they falsify data! )

If you think you are any safer in the Netherlands, you have a lot to learn about how otc fx cfds work. If you don't start studying the materials I suggested soon, you will just fall for the same tricks again with another broker. Either that or you might end up in a place like the USA...where you will have large spreads.


You may have not been aware of how fx brokerage business model works fully, but I would say 4 years of trading makes you proficient enough to understand some basics of how margin works.


I was thinking the exact same thing. I suspect that Tickmill wanted the account to margin out intentionally. But at the same time, why was OP trading in such a way as to be so close to the margin call?


FPA encourage victims and companies to submit all available evidence to analyze their case in a transparent way. See the rules here:


In your case, you already got some FOS adjudication, which ruled in your favor. But while we don't necessarily need to see the evidence related to the credit card transaction, it is curious that you were 225 EUR away from a margin call, especially considering the leverage in UK now for fx is 1:30 for retail traders since 2019 if not earlier with ESMA directives. So allowing the community to see the full trading record would give us a better idea as to why this was the case.

We have found in the past that those who are reluctant to show their trading statement were later found out to not be properly mitigating losses on their side. Even if the company did do some wrongdoing [e.g. not process a funding payment timely to induce a margin call].

Actually I think you got lucky that FOS investigator caught TickMill pulling a stunt. Otherwise the stop out level would have likely been hit eventually anyways. But I could be 100% wrong also. a complete trading record sorted chronologically by ticket number would help show this.

#RegulatedFool
Ps. I do have a lot to learn as like I said I started trading wiht only Tickmill as I followed my ex in his judgement.
I do understand the basics of margin and mitigating loss and I have all explained it to FOS, otherwise I would never have been able to win. I do not think FOS rules in yuor favor based on luck, but based on valid arguments. I was monitoring my margin constantly and have never let it fall below 100%. Tickmill had severe technical deposit problems on the days I was trying to support my margin.
 
Yes. Regulated fx firms can be some of the worst. Because they can fool more people with the illusion of regulatory protection. The company just has to be a bit sneakier about it. Offshore broker can just be silly with your execution and/or just walk away with your cash.



Mt4 really made a whole class of retail traders that do not understand basic accounting. Netting mode is the standard accounting method everywhere.

Live equity + margin requirements are the only thing that matters. The account balance number means nothing. So only the equity gains/losses shown in the account are real, especially trading long term. short term (day trading) you would see the account balance be more in sync with equity because you are closing positions constantly.
@compu-forex is correct in this case.




FPA is more than just a rant board. We try to bring companies and traders together to resolve disputes.

We encourage victims to submit evidence to support their claims. And the community is free to evaluate the evidence and offer their analysis on it. You might be making an assumption that since most companies do scam their clients in some form that FPA members will automatically assume the victim's behavior is without error. But in some cases, the trader can also equally be at fault or could have taken some steps to mitigate loss.

I already acknowledged that TickMill likely did not process deposit intentionally to trigger a stop out. Based on the UK FOS finding + my understanding of their business model.






I would even argue that TickMill intentionally has their funding workflow setup so that they could trip up clients as needed. So their payment approval workflow was intentionally setup in a way that was ambiguous so that if a client questioned, or if they were investigated formally, they could just say the payment "failed" and it would appear innocent. That conclusion is based on my knowledge of their business model of how they profit from clients + what other people who run brokerages have admitted to me about parts of their workflow + the FOS investigator's own findings.

And i accept you are fortunate the FOS caught the tricks TickMill was doing and was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Actually I'm impressed the FOS investigator even considered the payment was not properly processed.



I also accept that traders have some responsibility to mitigate loss. So even with all of the losses and hostile behavior of TickMill since before the stopout (10+ instances according to FoS , after being fully stopped out and in a middle of a legal dispute for losses), you proceeded to reopen positions and trade more???????????? At the same brokerage that you are simultaneously having all this drama with over literally 2 year period since the 44k eur loss occurred??

What were you hoping to accomplish by continuing to trade with a broker that openly mishandled your account funding?

How would you know their payment system problems were resolved? As the exact same problem could occur again (it occurred over 10 times already, one of which "caused" the early stop out).



But i was thinking to myself about how strange that your account(s) was only 225 eur away from margin call/stop out. And that when the stop was hit less than 24 hours from the 225 eur funding attempt (08 March 2020), you had 44k eur loss. The stop outs occurred over a 5 minute period .


Which means that you reached the breaking point of margin on your account near that time anyways.
And you also claim that you are a position trader, so you hold positions for several weeks/months.


So while I don't have the account history, i did my best to mathematically reconstruct the account open positions at the time. So I made some assumptions about the state of the account:

-> you had an average of 9.0 fx lots open at any given time, You may have opened and closed trades several times in between, but this is a simplified estimation.
-> you had at least -400 pips in negative drawdown.
-> You have 1:30 leverage on the account. (1:20 for gold)
View attachment 78307
-> The account margin stop out level is 50%
View attachment 78308

-> And off course the stop out to where you had 44k EUR in losses.

So the
-> Total starting equity and or redeposits were likely in excess of 66.5k EUR before you began to open positions that were stopped out. (83k eur for gold/fx minor pairs and 1:20 leverage)

View attachment 78319View attachment 78320
Of course this is just estimates. When I have the full track record, a more precise analysis can be made.



As I stated earlier, Tickmill gave you at least 2 weeks notice that they were discontinuing services to you. They don't need a reason. They just determined not to continue doing business with you. Now if you can show the FOS that cfd brokers are supposed to instead give you more time, then maybe you can win some restitution on that technicality.

But the 225 EUR question from me: Why you would want to stay with a company that treated you so poorly??....is beyond me. You could have closed and reopened positions at a new brokerage. Even as a long-term position trader, at most you would lose the extra commissions paid to reopen all positions and whatever pips movement between the withdrawal of funds from tickmill to the deposit at the new broker. This is simple arithmetic.


I am certainly not TickMill employee. And there is nothing wrong with exercising your rights to complain to the UK FOS. Perhaps there is some FCA rule that TickMill was supposed to provide more time to terminate relationship with clients if they have open positions. And if they are willing to award you more funds, then so be it.

But wasn't it easier and less stressful to simply refrain from trading with the company? If tickmill was so bad, why did you continue trading with them!??! Why are we opening positions with them? Especially after a 44k loss that they were disputing. It's been 2 years since that incident has occurred. Why would you continue opening new positions? I think everyone reading this would like to hear your rationale for this.



I can only judge your behavior on the forum and the evidence you present. Are we allowed to judge the evidence and ask questions?

So for the sake of full transparency, are you willing to upload a complete history statement?
Again, here is the link to properly generate this:

Follow the video examples exactly, and you should get the complete history and attach the zip file here. It is not difficult if you follow the steps carefully; pause the video if needed.

And if your account is locked out for some reason, you should at least have the account statements submitted for the FOS investigation. And the daily confirmation email for July 1st, 2022 when TickMill closed your trades.
Sorry I did not read your enitre analysis, as what you are trying to reconstruct is impossible form the summary from the FD. It was not luck or their investigator giving me the benefits of the doubt. Why does everyone actually question the validity of the FD. an invetigator has looked at it toroughly and after that an Obudsman has looked at it toroughly again as well.
Tickmill claimed it was my own fualt becaues my bank had problems. My bank was so kind to investigate this for me and has given written proof that there werre no technical problems at my side at all. They even explained the entire deposit process from my credit card. They also explained that some companies do bathc processing overnight instead of instant singel processing of deposits. So there is no luck in this case, hard eveidecne and valid (counter) arguments. And no 10+ does not mean 10 or 11 close outs. And no it was not only 225 euro to hold 44K. If you are so experienced you should know this. The key arguements are mentioned in the FD not all the details.

And what is the point of going over the enire FD about what happened? FOS invetigated it and not only heard my side, but also Tickmills arguments. why do you feel the need to do the entire case again?
I certainly do not but I am willing to adress you questions up till a certain point.

when the complaint was with FOS I did not know Tickmll could be so intentionaly fraud and deposit problems have never occured again. Also I raised margins up to make sure margin close out could never happen again in case I would ever encounter technical problems

But As like i said the main point is not what I did or did not do. It has already happened en I am just trying to warn others for Tickmills malpractices.
 
Ok, I do not fully understand. My balance was (figures are just example) 100 and floating los was -90, so I refused to close my open trades and take the loss of -90. Then they took over the account and closed all the open trade positions, so there really only was 10 left on the account and I had to swallow the 90 loss. I could only withdraw the reaming 10. Then how could I reopen again the same trades at the same price with another trader?

Using your example, Your floating losses was -90. Which is still real -90 whether you close the trade or leave it open. Whether you close it yourself manually, via stop loss, via margin stop out, via brokerage closing it.

It is still -90. Or you have a different perspective on this?

It is not my intention to trial and repeat my entire first complaint again here online. As the entire situation is tiresome as it is. I want to focus on the second case.
No worries. you could still share a statement covering the period after the 09 March 2020 incident? even if you want to share it privately, you can send a direct message.

I also hope whether you win or lose, that you would share the UK FOS conclusion here when it is done (both the initial investigator conclusion and/or the final judgement). It is helpful learning experience to see how they evaluate evidence.
 
Using your example, Your floating losses was -90. Which is still real -90 whether you close the trade or leave it open. Whether you close it yourself manually, via stop loss, via margin stop out, via brokerage closing it.

It is still -90. Or you have a different perspective on this?


No worries. you could still share a statement covering the period after the 09 March 2020 incident? even if you want to share it privately, you can send a direct message.

I also hope whether you win or lose, that you would share the UK FOS conclusion here when it is done (both the initial investigator conclusion and/or the final judgement). It is helpful learning experience to see how they evaluate evidence.
yes the loss is still -90, I do not disagree about that. But what is your point then?
I did not want to close my open trades with loss, and pleadd tickmill not to do so, gave numeruos valid arguments and proposals and tried to reason, they just ignored it and they intentionally forced loss upon me.

Yes if FOS has reveiwed ...probably in 2 years time.. ... I will definitely post it here, win or loose.
As it is mentioned to warn others.
However I feel this site is more visited by experienced traders, than beginners.
As unfortenately I have never read any of these sites uptill now.
 
yes the loss is still -90, I do not disagree about that. But what is your point then?
I did not want to close my open trades with loss, and pleadd tickmill not to do so, gave numeruos valid arguments and proposals and tried to reason, they just ignored it and they intentionally forced loss upon me.
Ok, the important thing here is not to feel alone in not understanding this concept. It took me a couple of years before I came to grips with it.

Tickmill may have forced you to close your trades but they did not force the loss on you - that came from your own trades. By saying that you want to hold on until your trade is in profit suggests that you think that the losing trade is adding some sort of value to the remaining equity in the account, which is not the case(putting aside commission & spread costs).

Of course we prefer to have winning trades and if you still believe in the trade you will hold it in order not to pay additional commisions but if you do have to close and move, there is no impact on the value of your trading funds whatsoever.

As a matter of interest, were you hedging?
 
Ok, the important thing here is not to feel alone in not understanding this concept. It took me a couple of years before I came to grips with it.

Tickmill may have forced you to close your trades but they did not force the loss on you - that came from your own trades. By saying that you want to hold on until your trade is in profit suggests that you think that the losing trade is adding some sort of value to the remaining equity in the account, which is not the case(putting aside commission & spread costs).

Of course we prefer to have winning trades and if you still believe in the trade you will hold it in order not to pay additional commisions but if you do have to close and move, there is no impact on the value of your trading funds whatsoever.

As a matter of interest, were you hedging?
I think it strange reasoning from you, as I did not close my trades, Tickmill clsoed my trades. All my trades have came back to profit, so they did force loss on me by closing my trades without my consent. But I will not argue on this with you as I will trial this and other experts will judge on this.
And yes of course I hedged.
 
I do understand the basics of margin and mitigating loss and I have all explained it to FOS, otherwise I would never have been able to win. I do not think FOS rules in yuor favor based on luck, but based on valid arguments. I was monitoring my margin constantly and have never let it fall below 100%. Tickmill had severe technical deposit problems on the days I was trying to support my margin.
when the complaint was with FOS I did not know Tickmll could be so intentionaly fraud and deposit problems have never occured again. Also I raised margins up to make sure margin close out could never happen again in case I would ever encounter technical problems

The first complaint investigation indicates that you had at least 10 other instances of deposit issues between May 2018 and Mar 2020.
[fos]...Information on a total of 12 payment processing problems Miss L says she faced between May 2018 and March 2020 (including those of 4 March 2020 and the problem of 8 March 2020 she has complained about)....

This also indicates that despite all of the drama of the first case (including whatever deposit issues), that you were comfortable enough with TickMill to continue the relationship (open new trades, continue trading) after 09 March 2020. Despite Tickmill denying wrongdoing even up to now and initially only offering 100 EUR compensation as a goodwill gesture.

So you are saying the 08-09 March 2020 incident was some one-off, or "freak" incident and, from your perspective was not likely to happen again? What about after Jan 2022 with the FOS FD? or when the initial FOS investigator concluded his findings (I assume sometime in late 2020 or early 2021)? Did you still see it then as a freak accident?

And raising the margin requirement would mean having to deposit more money to hold the same amount of positions. Which means an even higher level of trust. Or did I misunderstand this part?

And what is the point of going over the enire FD about what happened? FOS invetigated it and not only heard my side, but also Tickmills arguments. why do you feel the need to do the entire case again?
I certainly do not but I am willing to adress you questions up till a certain point.
FPA wants to consider all relevant facts when accusations were made. The goal is not to "re-prosecute" the FOS decision. But you led out with the story of TickMill misbehavior in the first case. And so I was scrutinizing what you said and what FOS found and seeing if everything adds up.

Which is why the full account history is relevant here. To help reconstruct the scenario as we follow along with the FOS FD decision process and your timeline of events. FPA has had several scenarios in the past where the majority of victims who did not disclose their account history were later found to be participating in their own fraudulent behavior. Or that the victim could have taken reasonable steps to minimize losses on their part. Regardless of whether or not the broker was also misbehaving.

I'm not saying you were being fraudulent. Just making the point that we have a right to scrutinize and offer a perspective on the information presented. And request relevant evidence to assist the community in drawing their own conclusions.

Believe me, I'm happy for you that FOS overall caught some fraudulent behavior and as a whole decided to rule in your favor. I think I even mentioned this before.
I would even argue that TickMill intentionally has their funding workflow setup so that they could trip up clients as needed. So their payment approval workflow was intentionally setup in a way that was ambiguous.........
And i accept you are fortunate the FOS caught the tricks TickMill was doing and was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Actually I'm impressed the FOS investigator even considered the payment was not properly processed.

This is a good thing for you. And hopefully this will discourage TickMill from scamming other clients. And/Or encourage other clients in a similar predicament to come forward against the fraud.


 
As a matter of interest, were you hedging?
the hedge trade would be irrelevant. You are just delaying the inevitable. Between the potential double-negative swap or spread widening (news, liquidity lack, rollover), you can still be stopped out from market forces anyway

Even if the negative positions moves into positive, it is negated by the hedge trades. We have no hindsight [at the time] as to how the account would have been traded.

I think it strange reasoning from you, as I did not close my trades, Tickmill clsoed my trades. All my trades have came back to profit, so they did force loss on me by closing my trades without my consent. But I will not argue on this with you as I will trial this and other experts will judge on this.
And yes of course I hedged.
I did not want to close my open trades with loss, and pleadd tickmill not to do so, gave numeruos valid arguments and proposals and tried to reason, they just ignored it and they intentionally forced loss upon me.

For this new complaint, I believe one test FOS will use is
did TickMill have the legal right to close the trade?
E.g. Was Tickmill required to give more time before termination? If so, how much more time?
As Miss L is arguing that because it was tickmill that closed the trades, she is not responsible for any losses.

For example, you may ask a company to lower their spreads on one of their instruments. But does the company also have a right to decline your offer? I'm not defending TickMill, but I am being fair to both sides.

TickMill would have likely closed those trades regardless of the profit position. So if the trades were +90, they would have equally terminated the relationship. Or are you saying they only terminated the relationship specifically because the account equity was -90, not +90?

FOS did not take into account future price movements [hindsight] in the previous margin issue from 09 Mar 2020.

Fair compensation, at present, would be to put Miss L as close as possible to the position she would be in had she been able to fund her account and had the close-outs been avoided. It is not possible to replicate this precisely, because there are key unknown variables in terms of what would have happened thereafter – that is, it is not known precisely how the over 300 positions would have behaved and/or been managed thereafter and what outcomes they would have had. I consider that an attempt to draw a conclusion on this, with the benefit of hindsight that did not exist at the time, will be unsafe.
So I don't see any reason FOS would break this pattern.

They determined that TickMill did not authorize the payment. And by not doing so, margin stop was triggered. And that the stop likely wouldn't have triggered if TickMill had authorized the payment. And likely future payments to maintain the margin based on Miss L's monitoring strategy and finances [at that time] would have succeeded (assuming TickMill authorized them :)

There was some fraud there in the old case. And FOS were willing to use that as the basis to restore the account equity with the approximate equity loss of when the account was stopped out as a result of the fraud (44,000 EUR). Where is the fraud in the new case?

Another test in this new case of forced closeouts will be
if TickMill did not have the legal right to discontinue relationship the way they did, would the loss outcome had been significantly different if the trade was not closed?
I mentioned earlier that the -90 was still real -90 no matter what angle you look at it. Additionally, the equity loss is locked in at -90 because of the hedge at the time.

I accept that I might be missing some relevant technicality for this new case (like some behind-the-scenes fraudulent behavior). But I mentioned earlier that hindsight is not considered when considering compensation. They would only consider the state of the account at the time the trades were closed. And what the condition of the account would have been had the trades not been closed at that exact point in time.
 
the hedge trade would be irrelevant. You are just delaying the inevitable. Between the potential double-negative swap or spread widening (news, liquidity lack, rollover), you can still be stopped out from market forces anyway

Even if the negative positions moves into positive, it is negated by the hedge trades. We have no hindsight [at the time] as to how the account would have been traded.




For this new complaint, I believe one test FOS will use is
did TickMill have the legal right to close the trade?
E.g. Was Tickmill required to give more time before termination? If so, how much more time?
As Miss L is arguing that because it was tickmill that closed the trades, she is not responsible for any losses.

For example, you may ask a company to lower their spreads on one of their instruments. But does the company also have a right to decline your offer? I'm not defending TickMill, but I am being fair to both sides.

TickMill would have likely closed those trades regardless of the profit position. So if the trades were +90, they would have equally terminated the relationship. Or are you saying they only terminated the relationship specifically because the account equity was -90, not +90?

FOS did not take into account future price movements [hindsight] in the previous margin issue from 09 Mar 2020.


So I don't see any reason FOS would break this pattern.

They determined that TickMill did not authorize the payment. And by not doing so, margin stop was triggered. And that the stop likely wouldn't have triggered if TickMill had authorized the payment. And likely future payments to maintain the margin based on Miss L's monitoring strategy and finances [at that time] would have succeeded (assuming TickMill authorized them :)

There was some fraud there in the old case. And FOS were willing to use that as the basis to restore the account equity with the approximate equity loss of when the account was stopped out as a result of the fraud (44,000 EUR). Where is the fraud in the new case?

Another test in this new case of forced closeouts will be
if TickMill did not have the legal right to discontinue relationship the way they did, would the loss outcome had been significantly different if the trade was not closed?
I mentioned earlier that the -90 was still real -90 no matter what angle you look at it. Additionally, the equity loss is locked in at -90 because of the hedge at the time.

I accept that I might be missing some relevant technicality for this new case (like some behind-the-scenes fraudulent behavior). But I mentioned earlier that hindsight is not considered when considering compensation. They would only consider the state of the account at the time the trades were closed. And what the condition of the account would have been had the trades not been closed at that exact point in time.
Hi,
Thanks a lot for your consideration in how FOS might look at it! It is very usefull to bare in mind these questions as I can prepare my arguments on critcal views.

If you have any more toughts please share.
 
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