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Problem IC Markets SCAM ($43,450 LOSS)

I am having an issue with a company

Pheniox123

Sergeant
Messages
184
Hi everyone,

I strongly believe that IC Markets is carrying out a combination of price manipulation/Leverage sudden changes/Swaps increases in order to liquidated your account by what ever means necessary.

On the 9th of March; couple of hours before my account was turned to zero; I had multiple hedged trades and my marign level was in excess of 650%, and I wake up couple of hours after (I didn't have a full night sleep and woke up after maximum of 2 hours); I see my account has gone from $43,450 to 0$. I was totally shocked and when I inquired with IC Market; they sent me the following response (citing margin call):

"Please note that we do not change the margin requirement on your account.

Please be informed that your account has stopped out due to free margin level falling below 50%.

We understand your frustration however, there are few global reasons on March 9th that have drastically affected the market such as oil crash 31% and US Indices limits are being hit.
Please see more details below:

"Pricing on U.S. indices has been disabled by exchanges following a significant plunge. It is expected to be a temporary issue, however, this means the total market impact won’t be clear until pricing resumes. As there is no price to fill positions at, open trades cannot be closed, and new ones cannot be opened. When pricing resumes, orders will be filled at the available market prices.
Earlier today, exchange circuit breakers were triggered after a 5% drop in U.S. stocks — the maximum markets can fall overnight. Saudi Arabia has waged an oil price war against Russia, resulting in the worst trading day for oil in almost 30 years. You may find more information here https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...tock-futures-would-trigger-trading-curbs-at-5 ."

"Oil markets crashed more than 30% after the disintegration of the OPEC+ alliance triggered an all-out price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia that is likely to have sweeping political and economic consequences.Brent futures suffered the second-largest decline on record in the opening seconds of trading in Asia, behind only the plunge during the Gulf War in 1991. As the global oil benchmark plummeted to as low as $31.02 a barrel, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. warned prices could drop to near $20 a barrel. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...fter-saudis-slash-prices-in-all-out-crude-war"

Please be informed, that situation is out of brokers control."

We also have sent an email informing clients about high volatility on the market and the necessity to take extra caution .

We are very sorry for the losses you have received. Unfortunately, there is nothing we could have done to prevent you from receiving the losses. With IC Markets all trades are executed at the prices received from our hedge counterparties once an order has been triggered.

We are not able to offer guaranteed executions exactly at your requested prices, we are simply streaming the prices that we receive.

Should you require, we can provide the logs of prices we have received during that time to assure that all your trades have been filled correctly.

Kind Regards,

Ryn Nguyen | Senior Customer Support Executive | IC Markets


mail



I am certain that there is no way my margin could level could go from plus 650% to less than 50%; especially when I had hedged trades balancing each other.

I believe that they did something during the time I was foolishly sleeping to alter the metrics to bring my account down.

I have attached a screen shot showing one of the spikes (coupled with possible leverage reduction/other forms of manipulation that they used to start breaking into my account and subsequently ensure a margin call is faked to terminate the account).

Any ideas of what I can do next?

Thank you
Pheniox
 

Attachments

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Hi Walter,

I was running mixed mode (EA and manual trades).

The EA was not making new orders at the time (it has a limit on number of trades and was in wait and see mode).

Thanks
Pheniox
 
Hi Walter,

I was running mixed mode (EA and manual trades).

The EA was not making new orders at the time (it has a limit on number of trades and was in wait and see mode).

Thanks
Pheniox
EUR CAD i only see sell trades, where are the buy trades showing they were stopped out as well,

Trying to see if your EA did not close off one side, like the buy take profit leaving you in sells only banking all your buys,
is it possible to show us more screenshot of all the trades that were closed off that day like you did above showing the buy trades comments too been stopped out please.

I use EAs a lot so i'm trying to understand why they would margin call a perfect Hedge please....
 
Thank you for your response.

I have screen shot the rest of the trades below (in the order of how they closed them citing margin call). I believe it must have been like dominos; as soon as they closed the first one everything else fell out of line.

Thanks for your help...
 

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Thank you for your response.

I have screen shot the rest of the trades below (in the order of how they closed them citing margin call). I believe it must have been like dominos; as soon as they closed the first one everything else fell out of line.

Thanks for your help...

Please stretch the history pay all the way up so we can see all trades closed on one screen / one page please so it's easier to see exactly where is hedging what including day befores history

Hit the SYMBOL button so it places all the same symbol trades next to each other so we can see hedged trades on pairs easier and calculate lots size

Thanks

example attached
 

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Hi there,

Sorry for the previous screenshots; it must have been a nightmare looking at them. Please see the following screen shots (2 of them) with history stretched out. I believe the first trade that was closed was the EURCAD -6K one and then the rest followed.
 

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First off, what was your equity when you went to bed. I am pretty sure it wasn't 43k. You were probably close to the limits at that stage. Whatever happened, simply tipped you over the edge.

Secondly, when you are doing hedge grid type trading, your % margin is absolutely meaningless. Normally, for 1.0 lots GBPJPY you need 1234 euro of margin on a 1:100 account. When you make a hedge trade you need none. Normally when you hit a margin call, a trade is closed(some brokers just close all). This closed trade would normally release a bunch of margin which then stops any other trades from being closed out(for a while anyway). However, in a hedge situation, no margin is freed up because none is being used. The 650% margin you had available simply was a measure of your unhedged trades which in your case was a fraction of your total exposure. Because no margin is freed, you can expect ALL hedge trades to be closed.

Thirdly, even hedged trades are marked-to-market in real time, so you are exposed to the spread and looking at the trade history, the exposure appears to be significant. This exposure is often hidden by the fact that your hedge margin requirement is zero.....ie you don't always appreciate how many lots you have open because you are looking at the margin %.

Let us know what your equity was and the total number of open lots when you went to bed.......
 
At 01h56 you manually closed off trades leaving trades to run with large lots in one direction against you like EURGBP no Buys to Hedge ( Only sells 3.18 Lots ) and EURGBP Pushed up higher and the SELLS on GBPJPY at 135.78 you closed leaving buys open only and market continued very hard against your positions over 200 pips ( add Up your lots size in one direction and the close positions prices and add up the pips )

You were heavily over leveraged in the wrong direction after you closed off your manual trades especially on GBPJPY that you closed off manually ( Sells )

I added up your lots sizes and distance between your manual closing trades to the price IC Markets closed off your trades and you can add up the $ drawdown and do the maths to your account balance how much more into the minus you went, and you can see clearly that over leveraging with huge market move, and holding positions for over 1000 pips and increasing lots size as price continued against you was not in your favour.

Then all the other pairs too...

The Markets did make big moves that week, and adding up the pips and lots size its clear you were over trading, and over leveraging adding too many positions increasing your lots sizes which does equal up to a margin call.

Your lots sizes were big against you and unfortunately the 650% decreased fast as price continued against you in the next 2 hours.
 
Hi Walter/Compu,

Thank you both for the time you took looking at the history.

Now I am reading your analysis it seems very logical and it’s kind of bittersweet...on one hand it shows that it seems that it was my fault and on the other hand it shows that I did not get scammed (the slight sweetness in all of this).

I think I had 7-10K or margin left before I went to bed...but usually the margin level doesn’t even touch the hundreds and I thought the 600% was enough (clearly it wasn’t).

Anyhow thank you very much and moderator please close this thread...

Thank you all
Pheniox
 
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