Allow me to put my 5 cents in as well... and what I want to say is valid for most situations, and if you can, take some advice from an old man who's been in Forex for decades. As an intro: I do understand the temptations of high profits and this brings us straight to these binary options.
A) In most cases this whole story starts by some people sending out mass mail, promising the easy riches and no experience required, it goes all on auto pilot.
Fact is that this mass mailer is an "affiliate" of the "broker" and therefore gets paid for routing the traffic. Check your URL whenever you click on the provided links.
At the same time this very same introducer has no mail address, no registered phone, and is certainly not a legit business. That's your first warning sign that you have to register.
The same introducer offers "automated" trading or claims to give you sure shot entry signals, promising highest possible and in most cases more like impossible returns.
B) Now you are being contacted within minutes, pestered really and talked into depositing money - and that where it all really starts to go sour. Boiler room methods have no place in the financial business in my opinion.
Now we're looking at the "broker".
i) All of these websites offer you an instant trading within seconds after deposit is received. It does not give you the time to read the "general terms and conditions" in detail. THERE is the "secret". The law, be that in the US or anywhere else like Cyprus or the UK, is based on ONE big issue: For as long as the "broker" publishes in his General Terms and Conditions all the details of how he is going to rob you blind, IT'S LEGAL, got that?? Any supervising authority will ask you upon a complaint whether you had actually read the conditions and whether you confirmed having read and understood them. Since you had to click and accept them, there is no way out for you ever again.
ii) If you take the time, not letting yourself be pressured into making a deposit, you find terms that make you laugh if you had not made a deposit, and it brings you to tears if you fell for it. The broker is entitled to ALL of your money, you're forfeighting it, if you "abuse" the system. Say what again??????? Right. And it's the broker's sole discretion to determine whether you "abused" the platform. Know what he really means by that? Suppose you have such an account. You have a independent data feed as well. You are using your separate feed together with whatever indicators and you go only by that when you determine that long would be a good decision and you may do so at the bottom of a move. You keep doing it, in fact running it as a countertrend system of your own. Say ou have a bunch of successes exactly because of your ways to trade because only dead fish swim with the stream. Continuous profits are a sure sign that you know what you're doing by using other features than provided by the broker. You may even be a tick faster than their own quoting shown on the website. In the broker opinion this consists of "abusing the platform" and he will close your account and keep all your money and there is nothing you can do about it. It is clearly stated in his published terms and conditions and it has been approved by the regulatory authority. CySEC is certainly not giving it's best to protect clients. That much I can tell you.
iii) If you ever play around with binaray options (which I do myself, too), do NOT ever accept any bonuses because it will limit access to your own funds at best, and make it impossible at worst because there are additional conditions attached to such bonuses and you need to read the fine print.
iiii) If you deal with a FCA (UK) regulated broker, it appears to be safer because there are no such funny conditions, your money is held in segregated accounts, and there is a much tougher way to obtain a license. You actually KNOW who owns the web site and in some cases there are public companies fully regulated and members of the Stock Exchange and still offering Binary Options.
I do not make statements here that I can't prove. Before I say it I have personal experience and I did put my money where my mouth is and actually followed through, even though with small amounts just to find out how in all the world this strange business works and who's to benefit. After a long series of phone calls and threats to report to the CySEC I believe to have a little knowledge and a big list of "don't do it this way"
The FPA, in my opinion, should open a section entirely committed to binary option trading because this is more like something for a gaming commission and has not too much in common with regular forex trading.
