RESOLVED - AvaFX/AvaTrade cancelled profits of $9188.54

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Tradetowin

Private, 1st Class
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An agreement with Ava has been reached and I consider the issue to be resolved. I would like to thank Ava for reaching a resolution.


Dear FPA members and moderator/admin,

I would like to detail how Ava decided to take $9188.54 from me with little regard to applicable regulation.

On July 31st I received an email from Ava that read the following:

Dear xxxx,(I have removed my name for privacy reasons)

Thank you for trading with Avatrade.com

The below trade(s) were executed in prices outside of the market: 205517125
205517174
205517224
205517282
205520763
205520798
205520821
205520839
205913746
205913770
205913800
205964052


In accordance with our Terms & Conditions, the P/L of those trades has been removed from your account.
If you'd like further assistance in this matter please email us: cs@avatrade.com or contact your account manager.

** Terms & Conditions: PROHIBITION ON ARBITRAGE AND MANIPULATION
Internet, connectivity delays, and price feed errors sometimes create a situation where the prices displayed do not accurately reflect market rates.
The concept of arbitrage and "scalping", or taking advantage of these Internet delays, cannot exist in an OTC market where the client is buying or selling directly from the market maker.
Ava Trade does not permit these practices on its platform.
Ava Trade strictly forbids any form of manipulation of its prices, execution, and platform or making transactions based on errors, omissions or misquotes on the Ava Trade platform.
Ava Trade reserves the right to investigate and review any account Ava Trade suspects of manipulation and withhold funds suspected of being derived from such activity.
Ava Trade reserves the right to void any transaction which it has determined to be a result of any of these practices and will have no liability to the customer whatsoever for any losses incurred.


The Damage: USD $3250.61

The following day I received a similar email for my 2nd account at AVA, I am not going to paste it as it is very similar, the trade tickets in question here were:

205517129
205517182
205517221
205520683
205520726
205520746
205520788
205520817
205913748
205913775
205964025
205964030
205964058
205964080

The damage on this account: $5937.93

For a grand total of USD $9188.54

I right away write to the provided email(cs@avatrade.com), asking for the cancellations to be reversed as the trades were taken about a month ago and cancelling trades beyond a reasonable amount of time has passed is illegal. I received the following response from Joshua Brown:

Hi xxxx,(removed my name for privacy reasons)

Thanks for your email.

Your EA that you are using is specifically trading in a way that breaches our terms and conditions. You were not the only trader using this EA on our platform and so we have had to remove all profits from it. As an arbitraging EA which we specifically prohibit, we had no choice in the matter.

There is nothing we can do more with this matter and we are not going to refund any profits made from the EA. I do recommend that you file a complaint with the relevant bodies if you are not satisfied. We do have all the evidence we need to present to any regulatory body if it is requested.

I do understand that this would be most upsetting to you, but unfortunately as I mentioned, this EA was trading illegally and so this decision comes from the management of our company.

Regards,


Now to clarify how I trade. I do trade around news time, as I'm sure many other people do. Unfortunately I don't recall which news release I was trading that day, but looking back at the economic calendar I might've been trading the UK and EUR interest rate announcements. I do a lot of news trading so after a few weeks I tend to forget the exact details. I vaguely remember there was something in the speech after the EUR interest rate announcement that moved the markets.

As a news trader I often get emails by forex brokers that some of my trades were off market, but these come within 24 hours, and reputable brokers actually adjust prices. One example I have is HotForex, it has happened to me on two occasions that I have received an email of my trades being adjusted, but not cancelled.

That is besides the point, I took several trades, with the help of an EA that I wrote myself(a really simple EA, it helps me trade on more than one account and it manages my positions, basically I enter my trades through the EA with built in slippage control and lot sizing on more than 1 account) it is me who makes the trading decision and not an EA, the EA is just a tool in this case.

I am attaching a copy of my statements for the two accounts in question. The account #1 is first, I have marked with red lines where the cancellations are on the statement. And Account #2, I have also marked where the cancelled trades are so they are easier to find.

Account2.pngAccount1.png

My thoughts on why this is wrong. I have two big concerns with this. Firstly the trades were not cancelled right away rather about 1 month after the trades were executed, most were opened and closed on July 4th, and the cancellations came on July 31st. The other issue I have is with account #2, you can't see it on the statement, but I actually submitted a withdrawal request for the whole account balance before the trades were cancelled. Which makes me believe that they received the withdrawal request looked at the profit I've made and decided to take some of the profit off.

The other general issue I have with this is that AVA is a market maker, the way market makers work is they provide a price and we as traders decide to take that price or not. Now AVA is saying the trades were taken on prices that didn't exist and were off markets, well they existed and I took them. Actually I took these trades on another broker that day and the trades weren't questioned, so If Ava is saying the trades are off-market, then whose market are they looking, there is no central market on forex, so I have a hard time believing that this price that I took was not available and mind you I traded more than 1 currency pair at that time.

I would like to pose a few questions.
If the trades were off market, why did it take almost a month to catch that? Why were the trades cancelled rather than adjusted to market prices within 24 hours of the trades? Why does AVA see it as totally normal to cancel trades beyond a reasonable time after the trade was closed.

I have filed complaints with FSO Ireland and FOS Australia, as AVA is regulated in both of these countries. I have received a confirmation that my complaints have been received so all I can do now is wait.

I have invited Josh Brown from AVA to come and give his company's statement if he chooses to do so.
 
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interested to see Ava's response.
this must be the first complaint coming from a trader and not a whiny gambler.+++
 
That's a very long delay. In the USA, they'd be facing severe issues from the NFA.

Were you using something like Beat The News Lightening or some other EA to handle the trades?
 
Will you invite them to respond here?
They are not NFA regulated but Irish regulated, before making nonsense they will try to solve issues with you first.
 
it would be nice to see how AVA deals with this, and the amount is not small. pls do keep us posted.
 
That's a very long delay. In the USA, they'd be facing severe issues from the NFA.

Were you using something like Beat The News Lightening or some other EA to handle the trades?

As I mentioned in my post:
"That is besides the point, I took several trades, with the help of an EA that I wrote myself(a really simple EA , it helps me trade on more than one account and it manages my positions, basically I enter my trades through the EA with built in slippage control and lot sizing on more than 1 account) it is me who makes the trading decision and not an EA , the EA is just a tool in this case."

In summary I make the trading decisions myself. In this case the news release was a speech so I had to listen to it and make a decision which way to trade based on what was said. The EA that I wrote simply sends my order to a few brokers that I use.
 
So basically you have every platform open running the same ea (each one)
waiting to read instructions from a file?So you open a trade on anyone platform ,the ea on that platform stores the trade and the other ea's pick it up?
I think they will respond . Ava has a solid presence
 
So basically you have every platform open running the same ea (each one)
waiting to read instructions from a file?So you open a trade on anyone platform ,the ea on that platform stores the trade and the other ea's pick it up?
I think they will respond . Ava has a solid presence

Something like that. It is similar to a trade copier, the inner working are not important I think in this case, basically it is a simple program to send my trades to multiple brokers, from there each EA that is running on the MT4 terminal manages the trade initially in case of spikes, however if the trade is in positive territory and the markets gets more quiet I manage manually. I initially used a Manage Take profit EA that was created by someone over at forexfactory, and I've just added more features to it over the years.

These trades were opened for over 40 minutes as evident by the open/close times, these were not quick in and out trades.
 
OK, that clears up the one remaining question I had.

Please go ahead and send an email to every address you have for Ava. Invite them to join this thread and explain the issue.
 
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