Going offshore to escape the CFTC

I am going to fund my account with Berndale Capital on Monday and begin trading with them. I make withdraws weekly (if I am in profit for the week) so I will keep everyone updated as to how it is going with withdraws. Couple of things to note…

  1. They require a minimum of $2000 to open an ECN account which is quite a bit more that the other brokers on the list.

  2. According to their website they only offer leverage up to 1:400. It says that “international clients will be subject to a default of 1:100”. I currently have an email into them to find out if 1:100 is the max leverage offered to international clients. I only use a max leverage of 1:200 so if 1:100 is the max allowed I may not fund the account…will update once I hear back from them.

It appears that the only method we have for deposit and withdraws will be by wire. When I opened the account they sent me an email with funding instructions and the only method offered was by bank wire. I’ll keep everyone up to date with how it is going.

Morning guys,

I can speak of LMFX only, because I don’t have an account with Berndale Capital. I don’t know how a broker can be qualified as a member of Group 1 in the thread, but I am very pleased with the services offered by LMFX. Everything appears to be professionally done and the whole backend which they call Connect is very interesting. I haven’t experienced any issues so far with their platform. Customer support is very friendly and helpful. If you are interested in other specifics I will try to find out the information.

Thank you very much!

I believe it is extremely courageous of LMFX to expose themselves publicly to our questions, along with Jack72’s experience with them. I would say at the very least they deserve a spot in group 1.

• [B]Berndale Capital[/B] (Australia) and [B]LMFX[/B] (Macedonia) appear (so far) to meet the criteria* for inclusion in Group 1 of our List.

If any of you guys [I]who haven’t yet chimed in here[/I] have an opinion (pro or con) on either of these two brokers, the next couple of days would be a good time to share your opinions here. Let’s set a deadline of, say, Tuesday morning, 0800 GMT, for additional comments.

After that time, if there is no consensus [I]against[/I] these two brokers, I will add them to our List.

Making room for the addition of 2 new brokers in pages 1 and 2 of our List will require re-formatting the whole List — as I’ve mentioned before, we are banging up against the Babypips forum size-limit of 15,000 characters per post. To work around this limit, I will remove all of the links which currently appear at the bottom of each broker listing (where it says, “For more information…”), and I will find a new place to list all of those links.

So — assuming that Berndale and LMFX get added to Group 1 — when you visit the List next week, it will look a bit different.

• [B]ATC Brokers[/B] (US)

This is not an offshore broker, so they do not belong on our List. However, because they seem to offer a [I]partial[/I] remedy to the burdens the CFTC has imposed on clients of U.S. brokers, I think that discussion of ATC Brokers in this thread is entirely appropriate.

Generally, we don’t spend time here talking about U.S. brokers. However, in the case of ATC Brokers, there’s a good reason to make an exception.


  • To be included, a broker simply needs to be (1) offshore, (2) willing to accept U.S. residents as retail forex clients, and (3) acceptable to those members of this thread who choose to express an opinion.

.

I vote yes for both LMFX and Berndale Capital.

Before I dive in with LMFX, I am curious to know the withdrawal methods available to US clients. Many a times you learn there are much fewer withdrawal options once you open a live account and attempt to withdraw in comparison to the list you see on the main site.

The minimum deposit of $2,000 with Berndale especially with possibly only 1:100 leverage, is too much for me at present to be parked at a single broker. However, I like the idea of supporting all options.

I just heard back from Berndale Capital about the leverage they offer. They DO offer 1:400 to all clients. Will be funding my account with them on Tuesday (can’t wire funds tomorrow due to holiday). Will keep everyone up to date as to how it’s going with them.

Dear Mindoverbull,

Thank you for your interest in LMFX. Due to the AML(anti money laundering) policy that we follow the withdrawal method has to be the same as the deposit method. However if you are using a Credit/Debit card for depositing funds to your LMFXConnect wallet we can only send back the initial amount of the deposit to the card and all of the profits can be send to you via wire transfer. I hope that answers your question. If you have any other questions we will be more than happy to assist you.

If you need a sholder to cry on , got 6 ,3" to lean on … dont waste my time to read anything less then your moan …

Looks good Clint , couple of more horses to run with …

LMFX,
First off, appreciate your participation on this thread.

I downloaded the demo account to get a sense of your offerings. Overall, looks pretty good to me, but I do have one question. Do you have plans to reduce the minimum trade size on some of your CFDs in the future?

For example, min trade size on grain (corn, wheat) CFD is 5000 bushels – that’s a full size futures contract, pretty tall order for most retail traders.

Thanks

While Berndale Capital seems like a nice fit, I want to caution that they are not supposed to be taking US clients and are definitely under the ASIC (and thus CFTC) jurisdiction. It is a matter of time until they are found out and all US accounts are closed.

I know that this alone cannot exclude them from the list on page 1 right now, but it is something to consider. If you tend to hold trades for longer periods of time it is best to remember that you may need to liquidate everything without too much notice. They seem like a nice option for now but will soon be removed and added to list two just like ForexFS - with whom I traded for 6 months before they stopped accepting US.

Dear Shatners Last Stand,

Thanks for the kind words! I will forward your question to the management and will come back here tomorrow with an exact answer. Meanwhile if you have any other questions about our services I will be more than happy to assist you.

I was looking around on the LMFX website and can not seem to find out what type of broker they are…ECN/STP, Market Maker etc. Unless I am overlooking it I can not find it anywhere.

Something to note…

I sent them an inquiry yesterday asking about this and have yet to get an answer to my email. I used the contact page on their website. As far as can tell they do not have a way to “chat” with someone either.

Had an account with ATC funded with $50K. They are IB of FXCM. Duting the Swiss news back in January 2015, FXCM almost went bankrupt, and I would have lost all my account money, maybe get cents on a dollar back. US citizens have no guarantees for any amount of your account money. You get cents on the dollar, during bankruptcy.
Now I have a Pamm $ account with Tallinex, and Euro account with MyFXChoice. So far, so good, the only thing with Tallinex, the spreads got wider lately, and with FxChoice they have a weird way of calculating commission, it is not a flat fee. Sometimes you pay 7 euros, sometimes 10 Euros per lot with pair like GBP/USD, but the spreads are pretty good.

Hello Guys 1st time here let me explain I’m from U.S. so i opened Live account with Berndale capital its excellent service no requotes super fast executions cust service very good & fast even account managers they will call u making sure everything is smooth very low spreads on pro ECN so way better than other i have tried so rest assured .

thnx
Eddie

Thanks for the head up :23:

:23:Another real rider …

Just a quick update - as of 10 minutes ago, the MetaTrader4 web platform has been activated in our back-office area.

It’s certainly a useful tool for checking the market, but is aimed more at manual traders as no EA / script support is included.

Dear jmullins9646,

I am sorry to hear to you did not received the reply to your question in your email box. I just asked our support department to check about your request and I see that they have replied to it yesterday at 10 : 22 : 29 (GMT +2). Maybe the message went to your spam folder. I will also reply here. LMFX is an STP broker.

As of the LIVE chat. If you open our website you will see a blue tab at the bottom right corner which says Queelo | Live chat & Help. From there you can access the Live Chat and our one of a kind Q&A system with ready answers to most of your questions.

At LMFX we are using a very unique Live Chat, Support and Ticketing system which brings the communication with the clients to a new level and its fully internal. Basically if you have an account with us all of the communication takes place in our system which makes it very secure.

As of accessing the Live chat in Queelo, when you are asked for login details just press [I][U]Don’t have account yet | Sign Up[/U][/I] and you will be taken to a section where you have to enter your name/nickname and your email address and from there you can start a chat with one of our customer support representatives. Our Live Support is 24/5.

If you have any doubts about the reply sent to you I will ask a person who has access to the email history to also send you an email with a screenshot from our system which shows your request and the reply to you. At LMFX we are serious about what we do and I would like to clear any doubts or concerns you may have.

Update: I was just informed that a screenshot of the reply has also been sent to you.