just simply and utterly stomach turning! it's all i can do not to reach for my [imaginary] gun. since 21st century laws do not seem to apply, i guess wild west style of justice is now called for.
but, since mounting an international posse would land us all in jail, there might be another solution to all this crap. as i've been reading up as much as i could on the internal workings of the eFX business, i came across multiple companies who provide turnkey solutions, from A to Z, for those who want to open a brokerage. there are so many liquidity aggregators available to connect clients to LPs, robust backend tech provided by companies such as Integral, forexware, xfsol, lightfx, leverate, etc.... and if we can't get a prime broker, that's what a prime of prime broker is for. so.... how about the FPA (felix and compadres) pull together some resources, and launch the first truly transparent retail brokerage? use technology like Corvil's to provide clients with 3rd party metrics for QoS, Integral's free tick-by-tick historical data to check that the feed is not manipulated in any way, company financial statements, liquidity partners, backend tech, custodian bank accounts for segregating clients funds (offer offshore banking accounts as well), all in the open, especially providing clients with the ability to see the backend settings controlling how their account is managed by the system, turn the whole thing inside out, the whole shebang even if it means initially lower profit margins.
and how about making it a profit share enterprise? for ex., the retail side of the business is run just like a normal brokerage but with integrity, no client fund commingling and so on. but now, if traders wanted to buy in the company, help support it's operations, maybe in the beginning when the brokerage is trying to get off the ground, they could pledge whatever amount of money towards it and in return own a piece of the pie as soon as the brokerage turns a profit, like a % of the net profits.
so now everyone involved would have an additional incentive to see volume grow and would be motivated to introduce more traders to the brokerage, thus creating a virtuous self-reinforcing loop that would grow the business.
so a brokerage created by traders, for traders, supported by the very same traders it benefits.
whoever has staked the most in creating this business, of course, will get back most of the ROI, but everyone else has an opportunity as well to be part of it, on top of making money through trading. and when losing money from trading, the residuals from the ROI sharing scheme will be a welcome offset. sort of like having an open-source brokerage: we, the community put it together through the leadership of the more seasoned traders from FPA, make it clear it is an FPA led initiative to give it the cachet of street cred it needs, and even better, have a social trading service as well where traders who choose to do so, can have the system display their trader nickname (not their user ID, which is between them and the brokerage) with all current trades with entry points, TP/SL and P/L, and equity amount as well (if so chosen), all in real time. so say, i open a new e/u trade, all the parameters to this trade would immediately appear in the public section of that real-time service for other traders to see and follow if they wanted.
this has the added advantage that if there is a spike that takes out a trader's stop, but those guys on the live board don't appear to have been affected, then you would immediately know something is wrong. either everyone is affected by the spike or no one is, meaning there is no spike. this the reason why the next requirement should be absolutely implemented.
so to honor the commitment to transparency, the founding members, if they trade as well, would be required to display their real-time data under the same user ID used on the FPA site. shining the light to keep everyone honest.
and finally, there should also be a fund/managed account service for those FPA members and others who don't have the time or inclination to mess with all the technical minutiae of this business but still would like to grow their nest egg. the best traders would be given a choice to manage other investors' accounts, and those who agree, every time they enter a trade, the investor(s) whose account is linked to that trader, the system would automatically enter him/her into the same trade (adjusting trade size of course for available equity). again, all performance stats would be openly available and published in a user-friendly interface on the company's site.
anyhow, just an idea... but it would be very cool indeed if we could pull it off. i can't help thinking about this one line gary oldman had in the movie 'the 5th element' where he says: 'If you want something done, do it yourself!' that's exactly how i feel about this whole brokerage business.
