Are Your Funds Safe? NFA to Shut down small forex fcms

[fxtrader7777]

Oh dear...the industry seems to be besieged by all kinds of mergers and changes lately. I'm totally new to forex and looking for a reliable broker but really, it's so difficult to find one! I have been looking at Ikon Royal because they seemed to be receiving good reviews on this site called Forex Peace Army but other than the reviews on that site, there seem to be very little reviews elsewhere on Ikon Royal. Other well capitalized brokers such as Deutsche Bank, FX Solutions, Interbank, etc, seemed to have lots of rants going against them. So frankly, I'm at a loss of who to go to.

Guess I'll just have to keep shopping. Now looking at Alpari US too. Have sent them email enquiries but so far, have not heard from them yet.

Originally Posted by forex savior

No Mas! No Mas! Like a bloody and battered Roberto Duran the folks over at Rosenthal Collins are giving up on MT4. This weekend they dropped a bombshell on their clients:
Tradewview not part of RCG?! as of today



Anyone who spends time on the bulletin boards has gotten to know Tradeview Forex as they have spent gobs of money advertising their wares. Yet it appears they were never able to get MT4 to work proficiently and as such are simply walking away for the whole failed experiment. One Tradeview customer on the forex factory thread referenced above states:



While Tradeview should be commended for knowing when to call it quits I must take issue with this notion that Ikon has a "distinguished regulatory history."

Last fall Ikon merged with Royal Forex Trading, which had a poor regulatory record and was sanctioned by the NFA right before they gave up their FCM license due to the fact they did not have the necessary capital to stay in business.

Second, both of Ikon's principals were former principals of Coes FX. Right after they left Coes FX became the subject of numerous regulatory actions by both the NFA and CFTC resulting in a quarter million dollar fraud settlement and the closure of the firm.
CFTC Settles Foreign Currency Fraud Action Against COES FX Clearing, Inc.

Third, sources have informed me that many of the clients that Ikon will be receiving from Tradeview were formerly the clients of One World Capital. One World was the poster child for undercapitalization and blew up last year just as the $5 million capital requirement was kicking in.

In short, Ikon seems to stick its fingers in an awful lot of cookie jars and it they aren't careful they may get their pudgy little digits stuck in one soon.

Finally, they are $10 million below the $20 million capital requirement set to kick in next spring.

So to those MT4 traders out there who chose Tradeview Forex because they were well capitalized I say buyer beware. Ikon is not Rosenthal Collins. It may be time for you to shop around again...

[forex savior]

Or so this website claims: Easy-Forex

You’ll remember earlier this year the Savior wrote up a story on Easy Forex after an Israeli news broadcaster ran an expose on them: Forex Factory - View Single Post - Proposed NFA Capital Requirement

In that story informants claimed that as introducing agents they only made money if their clients lost money. Well, in this soon to be published book from the gang at easy-forex-warning they claim this is how introducing agents are compensated:

In order to ensure it's wining against their clients, Easy Forex rewards their employees and people working for it outside the company, according to the amount deposited minus the withdrawals of their clients.

To demonstrate this method lets take an example.
1. An Easy-Forex agent convinces a person to open an account at Easy-Forex to trade the account by himself or to authorize an account manager to trade the account for him
2. The customer deposits $100,000
3. The agent is rewarded a certain percentage from this deposition. For the discussion let's assume 10%. That is, the agent is rewarded $10,000.
4. The customer trades the money in the account or someone else does it for him and after a while he withdraws the money. At this stage there are three possibilities:
a. The account is balanced. That is the account holds $100,000 that the customer withdraws. In this case the agent that brought this customer needs to pay Easy-Forex back the $10,000 he received for the deposted amount.
b. The account is drained. That is the customer lost all the money in the account. In this case the agent does not need to pay back Easy-Forex anything. In this case Easy Forex gets the reminder minus the money given to the agent.
c. The account gained relative to the opening time. Say, the account balance is now $200,000 and the customer withdraw all this money. In this case the agent needs to pay Easy-Forex the $10,000 they gave him and another $10,000 out of his own pocket.

What happens in practice is that they don’t charge the agent immediately. The agent's balance at Easy-Forex becomes now –$20,000, and next month he needs to recruit $200,000 before making any money. From any point of view this money comes from this agent pocket.

What Easy-Forex is telling their agent is that they are partners in the company: They tell them you will make money from the customers you bring only if the company will make money from the client, but you (the agent) will lose money from this customer if we, the company, will lose from him.

It’s called the “Net Deposit Method” and I must say this is all new to me. If it is true it is downright sinister. In fact, one agent provides testimony at the website in which he describes how angry an agent would get if their customer actually started making money:
An agent testimony

“I saw people with clients that made money for many months. They use to give him such bad service. Answer unpleasantly… There was a way of life in the company, a way of life… when a client was making profit they use to shout, the son of a *****, move away form here. The guy is making profit, he is destroying my account. He is destroying my salary. Fly from here, go to a different company. They gave him bad service to force him to move to a different company because it was on their expenses. This is a terrible thing. Now, at the end, it didn't matter what happened. I could not…. I, in the last Yom Kippur, and after talking to Rafi, I couldn't. This thing bothered me for a year or so. I don't know how I survived there one year or so.”

All of these testimonials apparently are related to Easy Forex’s Israeli operation. But is this kind of stuff going on in America too? Easy Forex is registered with the NFA and to date they do not have any infractions on file with U.S. regulators. But then again the more and more checking I do on these companies the more apparent it is becoming to me that the NFA has only skimmed the surface of retail forex (the fact that Robert Gray’s fake $50 million bond went unnoticed for months by regulators is still flabbergasting to me.)

In any case Easy Forex deserves particular scrutiny from the trading public over their alleged market making activities. Traders should seriously consider trading only with Dealers that are not in the market making business. The evidence against them is really starting to pile up.

[Forex Troglodyte]

Re: Cavemanforex.com Challenge

I originally came to the cyber world of forex forums in defense of a baseless accusation by someone who posts on several forex forums under the pseudonyms: Forex Savior, Forex Figure and Forex Scholar (see post at Are Your Funds Safe? NFA to Shut down small forex fcms ) suggesting Cavemanforex had no value and was run by a charlatan.

Up till then, I had never visited a forex forum. This accusatory post was brought to my attention by several of our Neanderthal brethren.

It is my understanding the purpose for these forums is to share information and NOT for the promotion of a website. To that end I sent off a memo to our upset members requesting them to stand down and refrain from defending us as I would deal with it. Thus, you may have noticed the lack of posts coming to our defense.

Conversely, an astute observer would have also noticed there has not been a single post on ANY forex forum anywhere from anyone who has joined our clan and was dissatisfied? Not one… and I’ve had the Trogs out scouring as many forums as we could find. Either no one actually reads these forums or we’ve just got a lot of happy people making money. One would think if the baseless accusations had even a smidgen of truth, there would have been at least a few negative posts from people who have joined us, had they been dissatisfied. After all, you can’t please all of the people all the time, right? … but again… not one.

I have been perfectly willing to put my Cro-Magnon uni-brow on the chopping block (see posts at Are Your Funds Safe? NFA to Shut down small forex fcms and http://forums.babypips.com/rate-my-b...tml#post51373), knowing there were many watching with clubs at the ready for that much looked forward to Cavemanforex execution.

Well the challenge has just finished its fourth week and, while 4 days does not a challenge complete, to date it has netted 395 pips. Had anyone had the insight to play the signals with just a miniscule .25 mini lot per trade, they would have already earned more than the 89 bucks it costs to become one of us.

Now contrary to our agreement, Forex Savior/Figure/Scholar, as of this post, has only reported on the first week. Perhaps that was due to week 1 being the only down week so far even though his account made a profit. Perhaps it’s just because he is a busy guy. Either way, the original slander came from him. It seems only appropriate and honorable that he should be the one reporting on its validity and posting a retraction when warranted.

Regarding our low price scorned in the original post… do you really think I make my money on an $89 fee? My money is earned on the 5+% ROI compounded every week in my account. I’ll let you do the math. It is low to make it affordable to everyone. If it were free, it would be perceived to have no value and therefore would not be taken seriously and certainly not utilized.

This forum thing has taken up far too much of my time, so I do not expect to be posting any further. For those who are genuinely interested in how the challenge turns out, our Wednesday Free Picks page will continue to operate for you to judge for yourselves.

To the negative people and naysayers, and you know who you are, I empathize with you. I understand how bitterness can grow from not having the stones to trade in this market… most likely due to heavy losses incurred from a lack of understanding. Hey… I’ve been there!

But don’t give up. You would do well to heed the wise words of Charles F Haanel who, in 1912 wrote:

“The mind may place the ideal a little too high and fall short of the mark; it may attempt to soar on untrained wings and instead of flying, fall to earth; but that is no reason for not making another attempt.”

One last thought. I have a deeply rooted personal mission statement? It is to have a positive influence on every single person I come in contact with, directly or indirectly… even my ex-wife. So I leave you with a gift. It’s a free download at:

The Master Key System

May you all be prosperous in all your endeavors.

Rock on!
Cavemanforex Grand Poobah

[dobro]

OK Forex Savior, your turn. And it had better be good because I am very impressed with the previous post. p

[mytwopips]

It looks like Caveman is legit to go this far to defend their name. The challenge was taken, the results should be posted.

[tonymand]

I am also disappointed. As he says FX Trog put his neck on the line here and as I have posted before I am impressed by that even without knowing how he would fare. I cant see any legit reason for not posting the results.

[tonymand]

Originally Posted by mytwopips

It looks like Caveman is legit to go this far to defend their name. The challenge was taken, the results should be posted.

If I remember rightly the signals were also sent to someone else. Cant remember if it was you or sweetpip. Maybe they could be posted by whoever has got them if the Saviour is overcome with shame

[mytwopips]

Originally Posted by tonymand

If I remember rightly the signals were also sent to someone else. Cant remember if it was you or sweetpip. Maybe they could be posted by whoever has got them if the Saviour is overcome with shame

It was Sweetpip.

[forex savior]

Originally Posted by Forex Troglodyte

Re: Cavemanforex.com Challenge

I originally came to the cyber world of forex forums in defense of a baseless accusation by someone who posts on several forex forums under the pseudonyms: Forex Savior, Forex Figure and Forex Scholar (see post at Are Your Funds Safe? NFA to Shut down small forex fcms ) suggesting Cavemanforex had no value and was run by a charlatan.

Up till then, I had never visited a forex forum. This accusatory post was brought to my attention by several of our Neanderthal brethren.

It is my understanding the purpose for these forums is to share information and NOT for the promotion of a website. To that end I sent off a memo to our upset members requesting them to stand down and refrain from defending us as I would deal with it. Thus, you may have noticed the lack of posts coming to our defense.

Conversely, an astute observer would have also noticed there has not been a single post on ANY forex forum anywhere from anyone who has joined our clan and was dissatisfied? Not one… and I’ve had the Trogs out scouring as many forums as we could find. Either no one actually reads these forums or we’ve just got a lot of happy people making money. One would think if the baseless accusations had even a smidgen of truth, there would have been at least a few negative posts from people who have joined us, had they been dissatisfied. After all, you can’t please all of the people all the time, right? … but again… not one.

I have been perfectly willing to put my Cro-Magnon uni-brow on the chopping block (see posts at Are Your Funds Safe? NFA to Shut down small forex fcms and http://forums.babypips.com/rate-my-b...tml#post51373), knowing there were many watching with clubs at the ready for that much looked forward to Cavemanforex execution.

Well the challenge has just finished its fourth week and, while 4 days does not a challenge complete, to date it has netted 395 pips. Had anyone had the insight to play the signals with just a miniscule .25 mini lot per trade, they would have already earned more than the 89 bucks it costs to become one of us.

Now contrary to our agreement, Forex Savior/Figure/Scholar, as of this post, has only reported on the first week. Perhaps that was due to week 1 being the only down week so far even though his account made a profit. Perhaps it’s just because he is a busy guy. Either way, the original slander came from him. It seems only appropriate and honorable that he should be the one reporting on its validity and posting a retraction when warranted.

Regarding our low price scorned in the original post… do you really think I make my money on an $89 fee? My money is earned on the 5+% ROI compounded every week in my account. I’ll let you do the math. It is low to make it affordable to everyone. If it were free, it would be perceived to have no value and therefore would not be taken seriously and certainly not utilized.

This forum thing has taken up far too much of my time, so I do not expect to be posting any further. For those who are genuinely interested in how the challenge turns out, our Wednesday Free Picks page will continue to operate for you to judge for yourselves.

To the negative people and naysayers, and you know who you are, I empathize with you. I understand how bitterness can grow from not having the stones to trade in this market… most likely due to heavy losses incurred from a lack of understanding. Hey… I’ve been there!

But don’t give up. You would do well to heed the wise words of Charles F Haanel who, in 1912 wrote:

“The mind may place the ideal a little too high and fall short of the mark; it may attempt to soar on untrained wings and instead of flying, fall to earth; but that is no reason for not making another attempt.”

One last thought. I have a deeply rooted personal mission statement? It is to have a positive influence on every single person I come in contact with, directly or indirectly… even my ex-wife. So I leave you with a gift. It’s a free download at:

The Master Key System

May you all be prosperous in all your endeavors.

Rock on!
Cavemanforex Grand Poobah

I bow to thee Caveman. No conspiracy on my part I honestly have been tied up and tracking all these trades on my demo has been what I sacrificed as a result. But your results speak for themselves. see post below

[forex savior]

I have been pressed for time and thus the Caveman Challenge has floundered as a result. But the cavemen are coming off three straight winning weeks. The Savior misunderestimated the knuckles dragging, club wielding, forex tabulating Australopithecines churning out signals over at cavemanforex.com

While only a fool would judge a signal provider favorably after checking out only a handful of trades amongst hundreds I will admit these cavemen have proved they are far superior to the monkeys who worshipped that stone slab in the opening scene from a Space Odyssey 2000.

So the Savior retracts his dis-endorsement of cavemanforex. Judge them by their numbers, not their body hair and sloped foreheads…