FCA Looking to implement strict US style leverage restrictions + more

Shares in high-risk City firms are crashing as much as 30% after the watchdog announced a crackdown | Business Insider

UK Bucketshop shares killed, all down 30%.

I think the leverage restrictions are a bit of a joke, looks like folks will have to take their trading business down under if they want freedom.

Probably they will move to CYSEC or other offshore jurisdiction. Anyway my broker is CySEC regulated so nothing to worry about.

CySEC banned trading bonuses and set max default leverage to 1:50 last week. The regulator announced that the brokers offering “excessive leverage” to retail clients are most likely not doing it in the best interest of the clients, hence from now on all forex and binary options brokers should design their trading systems to set as default a lower leverage and give them the option, if they wish, to change the leverage to a higher level.

This is a worrying trend I reckon, rather than regulating the bad things brokers actually do like stealing slippage, profiting of losses; there is a trend towards restricting traders’ choice.

Seems pretty pointless to me. The brokers will just move abroad. The existing FCA regulations are good enough

Germany are forcing all BaFin brokers to offer negative balance protection … this essentially bans ECN / STP brokers and forces the profit of client model :\

Does anyone else get the impression these decisions are made by people who only have a very basic understanding of the industry?

These decisions are being made by regulators intent on destroying [I][B]off-exchange[/B][/I] retail forex trading everywhere in the world.

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Three of the leading UK forex brokers – CMC Markets, IG Group, and Gain Capital’s City Index, are forming a contract for difference (CFD) providers association as a response to the recent announcement of the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) that it intends to alter the regulation of forex trading service providers. The newly-formed CFD association will facilitate brokers in communicating their concerns and worries.

Do you think they’d achieve anything?