IC Markets' LP faces "technical issues" and my account loses 50%

HIGHLY ANNOYED

Recruit
Messages
7
On 18.07.03 I placed two USDTRY trades on two different accounts I have with IC Markets. My son also made the exact same trade on a smaller account.

ALL three trades suffered massive slippage, delayed fills etc:

order #44919297 -GBP4,876.19
Requested Price 4.627010
Offered Price 4.689750
Fill Time: 21 Sec (can be seen on MT4)

order #23263606 - GBP2,866.72
Requested Price 4.627060
Offered Price 4.680530
Fill Time: 14 Sec (can be seen on MT4)

My son's trade order#23263654 -GBP790.47
Requested price 4.627060
offered Price 4.685050
fill time:17 seconds (as seen on the MT4)

I complained to IC Markets and then the next day so did my son.
FIVE days later my son received a full refund of £790.47 with this email from IC Markets:

"Thank you for your patience while we were checking your reported case.
Please be informed that, it was found during the time of your trading there were some technical difficulties experienced at our LPs end.
Transparency is one of IC Markets core values, which is why we will always be open with any technical issues we face, and we will always cover losses for our clients in such cases.
In light of this, at this instance, we are happy to cover the losses over your order #23263654 for GBP 790.47.
Should you find this as an agreeable resolution, please confirm so we can advise our accounts team to proceed with the credit to your trading account #1100016644."

FOURTEEN days later I still haven't received any refund and the only email communication from IC is to say that the matter has been referred to their management. Despite numerous calls and further emails no further communication is forthcoming from IC and their management certainly has not been in touch.

I have now submitted a withdrawal request in full for the remainder of both my accounts. One of which suffered a 50% drawdown and the other suffered a 40% drawdown in less than a minute. I find it incredible that a supposedly reputable FX broker can pretend to be 'on the level' but when more serious money is at stake, this level is in fact non-existant.
I have escalated the matter to their regulator, ASIC and am also reporting it to their licensing body AFSL.
Please find attached the three trades made by me and my son.
Any comments from IC Markets or other traders are welcome!
my account 1.png my account 2.png my sons account with refund.png
 
IC Markets have been invited to comment on this thread giving the reason for their delay in refunding these trades. The matter has also has now been reported to ASIC, AFSL and FOS.
 
you are right ,they are trying to save there name than try to give solution ,try to prrof there fault is correct ,even to me happened ,trade disable ,but first said no problem of us ,2nd said yes it could be our sever problem or connection problem or ect.. after i field case in FPA with compensation . now saying no problem by there side
so as a trader as well as advocate saying that you be strong in your position and ask some more money as compensation becasue your time wasting and psychological agony
 
So below is IC MARKETS' final solution/ response as to why my son's trade was refunded and not mine. They "categorically" decided that there was no issue at their LP after all, however they would allow my son to keep the refund, that was made "in error" - as a token of "goodwill":

"Dear Christopher,
We sincerely apologise for the delay in getting back to you, and ask for your understanding that rare cases such as this require thorough checking with third parties, which can also add to the time taken to make the full investigation. The involvement of an attorney purporting to represent yourself also added some confusion on our side.
We understand the key issues with your dispute to be:

• Your requested price of 4.62701 was not accepted and you are requesting a reimbursement equal to the difference between your requested price and your actual fill price.
• Furthermore, there was a delay in execution and you believe that this caused your fill at 4.68975.

We will address these as well as outline what we believe to be the root cause of the issue.

Q. Why was your requested price of 4.62701 not accepted? We have detailed the exact order information for this.
Order accepted by MT4 at 2018-07-03 10:00:01.295
Order received by bridge (FIX gateway) at 2018-07-03 10:00:01.331
Order rejected by LP at 2018-07-03 10:00:01.390 at 4.62930
Order rejected by LP at 2018-07-03 10:00:01.465 at 4.63234
Order rejected by LP at 2018-07-03 10:00:01.573 at 4.63850
Order rejected by LP at 2018-07-03 10:00:04.743 at 4.64565
Quoting disabled on USDTRY 10:00:04.750 as ICM’s rate filter detected spreads greater than 0.025 (or 250 pips) current ASK 4.6605 (MT4) and ~4.68 (LPs)
Quoting enabled on USDTRY 10:00:11.500 as spreads came back in. Current ASK 4.67
Order rejected by LP at 2018-07-03 10:00:14.664 at 4.67120
Order rejected by LP at 2018-07-03 10:00:17.737 at 4.67975
Order rejected by LP at 2018-07-03 10:00:20.746 at 4.68315
Order accepted by LP at 4.68975 at time 2018-07-03 10:00:21.930
Please refer to the attached chart illustrating specific spreads and bid/ask prices

Q. Should you have received your requested price of 4.62701 by point 3 above?

• By the time your order was sent to market at 2018-07-03 10:00:01.331, the market price was ~4.63061. This supported by tick data from our LPs, our platforms and Bloomberg.
• Based on this we cannot see a reason for why your requested price should be honored by IC Markets when it was not available in the underlying market.

Q. Did you receive a worse price as a result of the delay following your initial rejection and rate filtration (spread >250 pips)?

• Your fill price was 4.68975. The market first traded above 4.68 within three seconds of the announcement (however this was blocked by rate filtration).
• For ICM to have filled your order instantly then we would have to send it to market with no slippage tolerance, i.e., a market order with no range. This would have swept the book (along with your associates ~40MM USDTRY) and likely been filled at a far worse price than your 4.68975.

Root causes:
ICM’s trading environment is setup to suit the ~40,000 active traders that we have on our platform on any given day.
• You should not be executing orders on illiquid products during news announcements against ICM’s standard order configuration parameters.
• This means that typical market orders with 10 pip slippage tolerances and relaxed order time out settings are not suitable for you.
• You should be using aggressive order time outs and aggressive slippage tolerances tailored for the underlying product you are trading, however, you will miss most trades due to being rejected – you would be rejected (in MT4) in the above case.
We are always willing to work fairly with our clients and provide compensation for any fills deemed to be outside of what we would consider reasonable. Fills at the requested prices during major news announcements on exceptionally volatile pairs such as TRY however would be impossible, and any trader trading in an ECN environment must be aware of the execution risk in such markets.

After reviewing all available information, we have determined that:
ICM’s trading environment behaved as it should have
The rate filtration which stopped prices for ~10 seconds did not cause worse fills, rather it prevented them
ICM is not liable to reimburse you at your requested price
Your fill is reasonable given the underlying market rates throughout the duration of the news announcement
In spite of this, we are happy to hear your concerns and see if there is an amicable outcome that we can both agree on.
We look forward to hearing back from you.
Kind Regards,
Head Of Customer Support | IC Markets"

If one can't be bothered to wade through this BS from IC this is actually an exact U-turn of the email they sent my son for the exact same trade. I repeat this here:
"Thank you for your patience while we were checking your reported case.
Please be informed that, it was found during the time of your trading there were some technical difficulties experienced at our LPs end.
Transparency is one of IC Markets core values, which is why we will always be open with any technical issues we face, and we will always cover losses for our clients in such cases.
In light of this, at this instance, we are happy to cover the losses...."

And finally, having refunded my son for the same trade, this is what was IC emailed him as 'final closure' to the matter - basically giving an 'excuse' not to refund me:

"Dear ,
This is a follow up email with an update on your case that you reported earlier regarding the execution delays on your USDTRY trades on 3rd July 2018.
After further investigating the case, our liquidity providers have confirmed, categorically, that there were no technical, pricing or market execution errors during the said period.
Turkish lira has been considerably volatile over the past few months, and the inflation announcement on the 3rd July caused a particularly unstable market.
LP’s take preventative measures to protect global traders during such periods, including setting filtration levels that will automatically suspend pricing should spreads exceed set levels.
The ECN infrastructure responded exactly how it should have done as follows:
- The 10:00 Turkish inflation news announcement caused a spike exceeding 730 pips
- The LP’s correct filtration kicked in and pricing was halted at 10:00:04
- The market orders we received were initially rejected by our LPs due to the halt in pricing and stored on the server, to be filled at the first available price once pricing resumed
- Pricing resumed at 10:00:11
- All pending orders were then filled in turn according to the first available prices on the order book, at prices confirmed correct as per Bloomberg
The root causes of the issue were as follows:
- ICM’s trading environment is setup to suit the ~40,000 active traders that we have on our platform on any given day.
- You should not be executing orders on illiquid products during news announcements against ICM’s standard order configuration parameters.
- This means that typical market orders with 10 pip slippage tolerances and relaxed order timeout settings are not suitable for you.
- You should be using aggressive order time outs and aggressive slippage tolerances tailored for the underlying product you are trading, however, you will miss most trades due to being rejected – you would be rejected (in MT4) in the above case.
We are always willing to work fairly with our clients and provide compensation for any fills deemed to be outside of what we would consider reasonable. Fills at the requested price during major news announcements on exceptionally volatile pairs such as TRY however would be impossible, and any trader trading in an ECN environment must be aware of the execution risk in such markets. Unfortunately, due to the above reasons, this trade was not applicable for a refund.
While the losses in your account were refunded in error by our support team earlier, as a gesture of goodwill by the company we will not remove the credit from the said account.
We hope the above is sufficient to explain what happened, should you require any further clarification please do not hesitate to contact us."

I would say this is very far from final closure IC Markets! My attorney will certainly have his say and it will be interesting to see how FOS, ASIC and AFSL respond.
 
@HIGHLY ANNOYED how much was the original deposit?
How much do you have now remaining?

If you have a screenshot or video of the relevant balances, please advise.

I can repeat what I told a different person who was trading USD/TRY:

Turkish Lira had lost some 15-20% of its values very quickly after Trump placed some trade tarriffs on Turkey's exports

See also https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/08/turkey-lira-crisis-180814132601100.html

There was/is heavy news re: Turkey with Trump's tariff hikes and the subsequent actions from Turkey's central bank, fiscal policy, etc. And it affected other developing currencies like South African Rand, Indian Rupee, etc.

You should only trade majors and major crosses with tier 3 brokers, no exotics or minor pairs. Tier 2 brokers only for exotics or minor pairs.

With that said, why IC Markets offer pricing it wasn't prepared to deal on.
 
@HIGHLY ANNOYED how much was the original deposit?
How much do you have now remaining?

If you have a screenshot or video of the relevant balances, please advise.

I can repeat what I told a different person who was trading USD/TRY:

Turkish Lira had lost some 15-20% of its values very quickly after Trump placed some trade tarriffs on Turkey's exports

See also https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/08/turkey-lira-crisis-180814132601100.html

There was/is heavy news re: Turkey with Trump's tariff hikes and the subsequent actions from Turkey's central bank, fiscal policy, etc. And it affected other developing currencies like South African Rand, Indian Rupee, etc.

You should only trade majors and major crosses with tier 3 brokers, no exotics or minor pairs. Tier 2 brokers only for exotics or minor pairs.

With that said, why IC Markets offer pricing it wasn't prepared to deal on.


To be honest, if you're a broker and you're not ready to offer such an offering, why would you do it in the first place? This is not what a Top broker would do. Plus, I've had a bad experience with ICM beforehand and I could vouch for this case too as I've experienced the same. To no avail, they'd fully ignored my case and closed it down in a blink of an eye.
 
Nearly FIVE months after I submitted my case to FOS they are informing me that they will reach a verdict by the end of this month...they said the same thing last month....Let´s see!
 
Back
Top