I have come across a german website: handelssignale.com, followed them approx 2 years, there has been irregularities in the past with them but the reported irregularities were not an issue for me at that time.
With the new launch of activity of that firm in Sept2012 they claimed to only work with reputable broker OlympFX.
Well I analyzed their system for a while and it was in fact a grid trading EA on EURUSD, I knew the risks involved and that DD can bust the account. When I then started my account with OlympFX I was more than surprised that meanwhile they activated a second trading system on their clients accounts which was called breakout. this system was too good to be true. It cashed in 5 pips TP and 7 pips SL in the majority of times (sometimes double settings applied) and account grew at a rate of 70-100% / month.
What makes me now believe these companies are a scam: well they claim to have only an IB contract with the broker OlympFX and thus you need to wait for 6months, let your money reinvest and only then you are without hurting the contract elligible for a withdrawel.
Well I thought I have seen this company for 2 years, 6 months is long but its logic that they want to earn on the spread also their decent money...
Short before the end of the 6 months period for the first new subscribers of their 'service' they ran within 3 minutes at night all accounts into a grid dead end, ie. opened opposing trades until almost margin call was reached. To be objective, they claim this was a hack attack of evil hackers that disguise the performance of them...
Up to now all sounds like the Handelssignale is the scam only, but here it comes: at 04:05 CET time Handelssignale claims to have credited all our accounts with addition money to be so nice to us to avoid a margin call. a few minutes later 04:23 the grid again went wild and opened 4 additional positions ensuring also the credit to be gone...
At no time since 01:02 I could manually intervene in any of this trading, OlympFX claims the IB contract was clear I was not supposed to be trading myself, well on the website of Handelssignale they gave the safety confirmation that IF they make a higher loss of 25% you can ofcourse intervene and proceed with manual trading.
Now why are both companies liased:
Both companies independantly reply mails still but a disconnect at times when EURUSD was so much in favour that the hedges would have closed out with a small profit, was not possible to confirm WHEN exactly that happens.
Further the MT4 platform itself is old (built4 V225) and its demo and life accounts get derived from same server. Most important the trade sizes on a 71K account were up to 400 lots on the breakout strategy, only now I know that ANY good liquidity provided MT4 broker would have significant issues in ensuring Lotsize of 40+ to you as trader with confirmed prices and full execution.
For the strategy to exit trades: MT4 holds a nice feature: "close with" as closing option. For those of you that know the MT4 in and out and the markets this will be easy to understand, you basically closeout one trade with your oponent, a mistake they did in this cam was to open all grid trades within seconds appart almost all at same price (max 2 pips difference) as the broker was a fixed 2 pip broker you could have saved half of the profit (if it was real...) by closing with all positions with opposing ones. THis was at no point in time heard neither by OlympFX nor by Handelssignale, so the pur business model of both companies was to rip of clients with their deposit. nothing more, pure scam.
Meanwhile they had luck on their side and the EURUSD was more in favour for them, the hedges were not perfect (EUR base currency account is never hedged perfect) and the account ran into minus, this is when a roundmail came to all clients informing them that the credit given cannot be held up anymore (again the bad forum events caused their banks to jump ship... have you ever seen a bank analyzing forums?) and thus the credit was taken out, this caused immideate margin call and leaving a 15% from initial investment as negative balance on the account.
I have not received any mail yet from OlympFX to egalize this minus, I am well aware that in principal lossed on an account must be closed, but I see several reasons for going all legal way to not do this in this case:
1) I was deactivated from my account
2) a foreign credit was given to my account AND taken away, to my understanding that is a broker issue in itself offending money laudring rules
3) the margin level was even with credit below 100% so the broker normalls should have closed out the trades even before ...
Any help on how to hunt down scammers would be appreciated, either way I at least think others should be warned NOT to invest in this broker and to stay away of IB Handelssignale.com as they certainly pop up if not stopped somewhere else in the future...
With the new launch of activity of that firm in Sept2012 they claimed to only work with reputable broker OlympFX.
Well I analyzed their system for a while and it was in fact a grid trading EA on EURUSD, I knew the risks involved and that DD can bust the account. When I then started my account with OlympFX I was more than surprised that meanwhile they activated a second trading system on their clients accounts which was called breakout. this system was too good to be true. It cashed in 5 pips TP and 7 pips SL in the majority of times (sometimes double settings applied) and account grew at a rate of 70-100% / month.
What makes me now believe these companies are a scam: well they claim to have only an IB contract with the broker OlympFX and thus you need to wait for 6months, let your money reinvest and only then you are without hurting the contract elligible for a withdrawel.
Well I thought I have seen this company for 2 years, 6 months is long but its logic that they want to earn on the spread also their decent money...
Short before the end of the 6 months period for the first new subscribers of their 'service' they ran within 3 minutes at night all accounts into a grid dead end, ie. opened opposing trades until almost margin call was reached. To be objective, they claim this was a hack attack of evil hackers that disguise the performance of them...
Up to now all sounds like the Handelssignale is the scam only, but here it comes: at 04:05 CET time Handelssignale claims to have credited all our accounts with addition money to be so nice to us to avoid a margin call. a few minutes later 04:23 the grid again went wild and opened 4 additional positions ensuring also the credit to be gone...
At no time since 01:02 I could manually intervene in any of this trading, OlympFX claims the IB contract was clear I was not supposed to be trading myself, well on the website of Handelssignale they gave the safety confirmation that IF they make a higher loss of 25% you can ofcourse intervene and proceed with manual trading.
Now why are both companies liased:
Both companies independantly reply mails still but a disconnect at times when EURUSD was so much in favour that the hedges would have closed out with a small profit, was not possible to confirm WHEN exactly that happens.
Further the MT4 platform itself is old (built4 V225) and its demo and life accounts get derived from same server. Most important the trade sizes on a 71K account were up to 400 lots on the breakout strategy, only now I know that ANY good liquidity provided MT4 broker would have significant issues in ensuring Lotsize of 40+ to you as trader with confirmed prices and full execution.
For the strategy to exit trades: MT4 holds a nice feature: "close with" as closing option. For those of you that know the MT4 in and out and the markets this will be easy to understand, you basically closeout one trade with your oponent, a mistake they did in this cam was to open all grid trades within seconds appart almost all at same price (max 2 pips difference) as the broker was a fixed 2 pip broker you could have saved half of the profit (if it was real...) by closing with all positions with opposing ones. THis was at no point in time heard neither by OlympFX nor by Handelssignale, so the pur business model of both companies was to rip of clients with their deposit. nothing more, pure scam.
Meanwhile they had luck on their side and the EURUSD was more in favour for them, the hedges were not perfect (EUR base currency account is never hedged perfect) and the account ran into minus, this is when a roundmail came to all clients informing them that the credit given cannot be held up anymore (again the bad forum events caused their banks to jump ship... have you ever seen a bank analyzing forums?) and thus the credit was taken out, this caused immideate margin call and leaving a 15% from initial investment as negative balance on the account.
I have not received any mail yet from OlympFX to egalize this minus, I am well aware that in principal lossed on an account must be closed, but I see several reasons for going all legal way to not do this in this case:
1) I was deactivated from my account
2) a foreign credit was given to my account AND taken away, to my understanding that is a broker issue in itself offending money laudring rules
3) the margin level was even with credit below 100% so the broker normalls should have closed out the trades even before ...
Any help on how to hunt down scammers would be appreciated, either way I at least think others should be warned NOT to invest in this broker and to stay away of IB Handelssignale.com as they certainly pop up if not stopped somewhere else in the future...