…Dr Lexy brought this to your attention a few days ago…
Here is an excellent Financial Times article about it:
Through an invitation by FXCM, I have just completed this form:
And here is the consultation document…
A good read…
I got that as well. I happen to think it could be a blessing for new traders, removing high leverage might save a few accounts. What do others think?
Me.too…
It is a small step…
Again, like with slot machines or casinos or unprotected *** with strangers or smoking or eating Macdonalds’ fatty food, you can only protect people so far: free will is still what ultimately makes people addicted to harmful habits…
Throughout the world of finance/commerce, it seems to me that industries that persistently refuse to regulate themselves adequately end up with regulation being forced on them [I]which works out much worse for them[/I], in the long run.
But arguably there’s always a sense in which they have mostly themselves to blame for this outcome.
The great irony, in these situations, is that the people most resenting this, and often complaining most loudly about it from their allegedly “libertarian” viewpoints, are directly or indirectly the same folk whose behaviour has in the first place caused the exact problems to which “heavy-duty regulation” is the increasingly widely-perceived solution.
There’s a gradual but inexorable societal progression towards more and more regulators with bigger and bigger teeth, isn’t there? Like it or hate it (and my own view is that it’s probably a small step in the right direction), it is what it is.
I think that it is a good thing such high leverages are removed. Giving desperate people a bonus and 500:1 leverage is wrong. Market makers need to be reigned in.
well,
in the end it doesnt really come down to leverage, less leverage only means that retail traders are going to lose their money slower (in time frames) but not less money.
anyways, comming from a background of trading futures and warrants, i enforce a regulation of leverage. any leverage higher than 20:1 in futures trading or warrants is considered more gambling than “investing” or “trading”.
when you look at warrants which have a leverage around 20:1 then you can see how close the strike price for them is (strike price means all invest capital lost) in fact is. the reality is simply that a 20:1 warrant can wipe the invested money out with a move of price of the underlaying sevurity by only 1-2%.
now calculating on a leverage of 100:1 like offered on CFDs you can calculate yourself that 0.25% against your direction is already wiping out the same amount of money that a comparable warrant would be worth.
Three of the big CFD dealers are now forming a “UK CFD Association”, as a reaction to the FCA’s proposed market limitations …
Thank you for that, Dr. Lexy!!
as usual, after threatening them to do something against it they “react” on “themselves” 
Here is a lively conversation about this on another forum:
FCA imposes bonus ban and leverage cap for CFDs @ Forex Factory
Good read indeed, I do think it’s step forward.