Here is my story. On 26 June 2014, I traded on the natural gas instrument (17 orders) and consequently ECmarkets.com (the company) cancelled my profits. When I enquired why, later in their Final Answer (FA) they told me I intentionally executed orders at off-market prices. They said that the orders were executed at 14:30:03 GMT at the price of USD 4.562 which was wrong as they state it was USD 4.513, relying on their data feed providers.
Further, they said that they believed that I was acting in conjunction with another client of the company and that I was logging-in from multiple IP addresses – all in effort to abuse the company systems towards unjust enrichment.
In their FA, they rely on §13 of the Terms and Conditions, which prohibits „system abusive orders, including but not limited to one’s intention to benefit from delays in the prices, to trade at off-market prices and/or outside trading hours and to abuse the system for trading at manipulated prices.“ The provision is linked to other provisions leading to event of default and eventually to voidance of all transactions executed on the financial instrument in question.
I first address the first and major point, i.e. trading on off-market prices. I placed all of the 17 orders on the available price (and not wrong, see below) and the orders were confirmed at 14:30:03. This is undisputed. However, the orders were placed on average 3 seconds earlier, that is 14:30:00 [this follows from the MT4 Logs 1-3, these are the first, middle and last trades listed in the Account statement. The discrepancy between the real time and the log’s times are due to various times on different virtual private servers (VPS) of mine, but the bottom line is the difference between the placement of the order and the acceptance which is 3 seconds].
The fact that the price of USD 4.562 was available at the time of placement of the order, i.e. 14:30:00 is supported by the MT4 logs and Account Statement. Furthermore, the Bloomberg prices which reflect the real market price are in complete accord with the company’s quotation. Bloomberg screenshot shows the prices at 14:30:00 between 4.538 and 4.564.
Finding that the decisive price should be at 14:30:03 would mean that a broker can wait with its confirmation of the order as long as it sees fit until the prices are in its favor. This goes completely against the MiFID best execution rationale and, furthermore, such construction would turn the world of OTC contracts on its head.
As to the second issue, i.e. using multiple IP addresses, this is not regulated in the Terms and Conditions. In the FA, the company only accuses me of doing that without further substantiation and reliance on the contract. Therefore, such an allegation is completely groundless.
For the reasons stated above, I submit that the company cannot rely on the off-market prices clause nor on any other and should honor the trades.