That seems strange that MBtrading/EFX is so undercapitalized. They are one of the consistently highest rated brokers out there, so I don’t know what to take more into account, capitalization or reputation. For example, FXCM has an excellent capitalization but there are some horror stories out there about stop-hunting and trading against their customers.
Great link Forex Savior on the CFTC’s report on funds under management.
I can’t help but notice what a small amount is in the US. Even FXCM with all their advertising efforts, which in many respects I do not believe even meets the NFA’s standard concerning misleading information, has any large investors. I’m just trying to point out that they can’t have even one significantly large investor if they haven’t even broke the $100M USD level. In the U.K., FXCM would be a small company forex outfit. According to this report, it almost appears that none of these guys are all that safe.
So if the big players don’t put their money in these companies, should we?
you have to remember that the forex industry is still very new, what ten years old? These firms haven’t had the time to grow into multi-billion dollar companies like schwab but since most of the large firms have institutional investors I would feel comfortable trading with an Oanda or FXCM.
President Bush will officially veto the farm bill today per Reuters:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush is expected to veto the “bloated” $280 billion farm bill on Wednesday, a White House spokeswoman said.
Spokeswoman Dana Perino said the five-year bill was “bad for American taxpayers.” Farm leaders in Congress say they can override the veto and enact the five-year bill as law.
Congress may initiate an override vote as early as this evening. We are nearing the end game now.
So many scandals, so little time. Late last year Felix Homogratus the infamous �Forex Bastard� of forexpeacearmy.com fame got swept up in an international sting operation conducted by the Department of Homeland Security. (See Complaint Document: http://www.pipwizard.com/pdf/marriagefraud-complaint.pdf )
Apparently forex bastard was dating and harboring a Russian vixen (photo here: Pair arrested in green card marriage that resulted from Web ads - Los Angeles Times) who had participated in marital fraud. This Monday Yuliya Mikhailovna Kalinina started serving a four month �home detention� sentence and will likely face deportation according to the San Jose Mercury News: http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_9113354
SoCal woman who posted online marriage ad sentenced
The Associated Press
Article Launched: 04/30/2008 08:46:28 PM PDTLOS ANGELES�A Russian woman who was found guilty of marriage fraud for paying a man to get a green card has been sentenced to four months in prison.
The U.S. Attorney’s office says Yuliya Mikhailovna Kalinina, who was also found guilty of one charge of aiding and abetting, was ordered Wednesday to serve four months home detention and begin her prison sentence on May 19.
Kalinina, who faced up to five years in federal prison, could be deported after she is released because she is a convicted felon.
Benjamin Adams, the man who responded to Kalinina’s online ad offering prospective husbands up to $15,000 to marry her, was sentenced April 7 to two months in prison for marriage fraud and making a false statement.
Kalinina testified during her trial that she didn’t know “green card marriages” were illegal.
It is one of the most bizarre stories I have covered to date. Ms. Kalinina put up an ad on Craig�s List stating she was willing to pay $300 a month and a total of $15,000 to marry someone to get that golden ticket to America. CNN ran a story on it at the time:
‘Green Card Marriage’ ad nets arrest - CNN.com
Sure enough there was some down on his luck bloke out there foolish enough to take her up on her offer. That Wally Brain would be Benjamin Adams. Kalinina’s live-in boyfriend, Dmitri Chavkerov, an Internet-ordained minister, wed the two defendants.
Who is Dmitri Chavkerov? According to EuroMoney Dmitri Chavkerov is none other than Forex Bastard:
http://www.euromoneyfix.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=1853868
Dmitri you magnificent bastard! Not only are you a forex bastard, but you�re an ordained minister too?! What a true Renaissance man�
Nice of you to also take Yuliya off Benjamin Adams� hands and put her up in your swinging pad, where I assume she is now serving her four month �home detention� prison sentence? Now that�s an easy piece of prison time with built in conjugal visitation rights included!
So is this the end of the notorious forexpeacearmy? According to a thread at Elite Trader titled �Felix Sells Out� MB Trading has cut its ties to Forex Bastard and torn up their IB agreement with him: Forums - Felix Sells Out
But Forex Bastard is nothing if not resilient. Over the years he has hosted a slew of forex related websites and changed his name more often than Prince:
Forexbastard.com
Forexpeacearmy.com
Kingofforexsignal.com
Forexfreedom.com
But it will be hard for the Bastard to re-invent himself in light of this story. Google Forex Bastard and Dmitri Chavkerov and you�ll find a bucketful of blogs designed to bring down the Bastard, most notably: Attacking Forex Market which makes some hair raising allegations that imply that the Bastard is not just running his own little websites but also pulling the strings behind a whole host of actual forex dealers.
Such is the nefarious influence of Forex Bastard that he has spawned a whole series of paranoid blogs that insist he is some kind of one man Freemason Society (or Stonecutter Society if you prefer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdaRuTwWl9I).
If that isn�t enough to warn you off from forexpeacearmy there is this very insightful video by a trader who demonstrates how the reviews at forexpeacearmy are bogus and not worth the pixels they are printed on: YouTube - Forex Scams - forexbastards.com
It�s a mad, mad, mad forex world we live in. Thank heavens all these guys have to get licenses in the next few months. This insanity has got to stop.
D�OH!!!
WASHINGTON (CNN) – Lawmakers scrambled Thursday to fix a clerical error that derailed an effort to override President Bush’s veto of a $300 billion farm bill.
Congress may have to revote on a $300 billion farm bill due to what Democrats called a clerical error.
The House of Representatives voted 316-108 Wednesday to override the president’s veto, but shortly after the vote, lawmakers learned that a “not particularly controversial” section of the bill was accidentally omitted from the version that Congress sent to the White House, said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland.
The discovery prompted concerns from Hoyer’s Republican counterpart that the override vote was improper.
“What’s happened here raises serious constitutional questions – very serious,” said Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. “I don’t see how we can proceed with the override as it occurred.”
Hoyer suggested that the section left out of the original bill – authorizing trade and food aid – could be approved by both houses of Congress and sent back to Bush, "either to be signed by him or vetoed by him, and we would consider it in that context."
But late Wednesday, a Democratic leadership aide said the House likely will hold an entirely new vote on the complete farm bill, move it to the Senate for a quick vote and send it to the White House – where Bush is likely to let it die without his signature during the Memorial Day recess.
Democrats said the matter stemmed from a clerical error. But Republicans pounced on what they called a “fiasco,” which they said would require a temporary extension of the current farm bill.
The veto was overridden and the CFTC is now at work implementing the new law passed by Congress. CFTC has just issued a press release touting what the new law does:
CFTC Applauds Enactment of Agency Reauthorization Legislation
� Enhances agency authority over off-exchange retail foreign currency fraud by:
Clarifying that the CFTC�s anti-fraud authority applies to certain retail off-exchange foreign currency transactions (also known as the �Zelener� fix)
Creating a new registration category for retail foreign exchange dealers and requiring registration for those who solicit orders, exercise discretionary trading authority, and operate commodity pools with respect to off-exchange retail foreign currency transactions
Imposing minimum capital requirements for futures commission merchants and retail foreign exchange dealers that act as counterparties in such transactions.
And so it begins. The following firms do not currently meet the upcoming capital requirement increase to $10 million which will take effect 120 days from today:
Advanced Markets $5,100,000
Bacera $5,500,000
Money Garden $6,600,000
Easy Forex $7,200,000
MB Trading $7,700,000
Hotspot $7,700,000
Forex Club $7,900,000
Friedberg Mercantile $8,000,000
CMC $8,300,000
Alpari $8,800,000
Ikon $8,800,000
good stuff. thx forexsavior.
One of the fastest growing markets for retail fx trading is in China. The only problem for forex dealers is that currency trading in China is illegal. The Chinese Government routinely rounds up underground forex dealers and introducing brokers but just as with the old prohibition laws the trading public seems to just ignore their communist masters and keep on drinking that moonshine.
But currency bootleggers beware: if you get caught you may wind up in a stank Chinese prison sewing sneakers together for Nike or stitching hula shirts together for Wal*Mart.
Such are the fates now of dozens of former introducing brokers for Northfinance and Forex.CH after a series of raids in mainland China.
Of course, no one should be surprised that Northfinance has once again gotten into legal trouble. They have long been an industry rogue and their recent purchase by FX Pro has done little to rein them in. But this does not bode well for Forex.CH, which is a Swiss based broker already reeling from the new banking laws in Switzerland that may put them out of business. It is going to be a lot harder for them to meet Swiss capital requirements now that their boys in China have been pinched:
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Since most people can�t read Chinese I�ll summarize below:
On May 12, Shanghai police arrested a Russian citizen, who was the chief representative of North Finance, in addition to personnel from Northfinance�s IB, marketing, operations and accounting departments. According to Northfinance�s Russian flunky, there were more than 40 IBs working for NorthFinance, and each IB had to bring in more than 20 accounts to maintain their IB status. NorthFinance took RMB as client deposits, and all the money went directly to the flunky�s personal account, over 20 million RMB is now sitting in his frozen account.
On May 22, Shenzhen police arrested 13 people, all of whom were referral agents for GFX Capital Markets. From 2004 to 2007, they introduced a total of 184 clients to GFX. Forex.CH rebated $40 USD for every transaction, and clients had to pay an extra 80-100 RMB per trade. According to the prosecutor, clients made money in the beginning, but they all lost in the end. The referral agents avoided detection all these years by masquerading as a software company selling FX market analysis.
As I said before, China doesn�t play around. If they�re lucky these agents will be sent to a prison factory to spray lead paint on cheap Hannah Montana dolls but if they�re unlucky, well� take a read through Alexander Solzhenitsyn�s Gulag Archipelago and you�ll get the picture.
Now, knowing the manner that companies like GFX and Northfinance do business and knowing that they have been unregulated for many years why on earth would anyone open an account with such an outfit?
How can you say the claims are false? Have you actually used Cavemanforex? If so, show us your proof. If not, your baseless and scandalous accusations are without merit.
Forex Troglodyte feel free to leave your trading signals here on this thread so that we can all judge for ourselves!
Having a rough day trading? Well, things could always be worse. You could have an account at one of the bankrupt forex firms described below. Perhaps the worst thing about having an account locked up in bankruptcy is the uncertainty and the legalese that gets spit in your face by court ordered receivers, (although in the case of Aleccoh FX all you get is some ass clown appearing once a month on a bulletin board hiding behind a mug shot of George Soros.)
Here is the latest correspondence from the court appointed receiver at FXLQ:
Robb Evans & Associates LLC
Receiver of Forex Liquidity LLC
Notice to Customers and Creditors of Forex Liquidity LLC
May 28, 2008
The Receiver has communicated with many of you that it intended to file a motion this week with the United States District Court seeking approval of an interim distribution.In the last few days certain unexpected events have taken place that will cause a delay in the Receiver�s motion. Those events involve creditor and other related issues which may or may not impact the ultimate distribution proposal to be made by the Receiver. The Receiver is not currently able to disclose the nature of what has transpired, but hopes to have these issues resolved very soon.
If these issues can be resolved, the Receiver should be in a position to make a distribution recommendation to the Court by mid-June.
There is a lot of hedging in those three paragraphs. A lot of �if�s, should�s, unexpected�s, may�s, and hope�s� tossed in, which makes it far more likely that the customers stuck at FXLQ aren�t going to get all of their money back.
Of course his Holiness, Aleccoh FX, can�t be bothered to communicate in such a professional manner. He continues to hide behind a .jpg of George Soros and in his latest bloviation to the masses states: Forex Trading - View Single Post - first 200 pips on me , the rest , we will share
Good Day All
I am sorry for the delay in briefing you all but please be sure that my lawyers and I are following through this matter daily and recently by the hour.
Here is a small brief :
After many tractations and stallings by the -----------.SA staff and by its president, all the funds of the privatly owned account of its president has been frozen.
The good thing is that unofficialy the aleccohfx account holder’s funds are there.
I of course refused to drop the criminal charges against these scammers unless they return the funds to each and every investor to the last penny.
As it seems, they are sending emails to the account holders giving them the choice to either continue trading with them or withdraw their funds.
I couldn’t emphasize enough to send an immediate withdrawal of your funds to this email because i do not trust these people a bit , and if you read the postings on this thread, you will know why.
Please report back to <[email protected]> if you have received your funds in order to inform my lawyers and the judge in charge of the case.
I must remind you that eventhough they bankrupted aleccohfx and -------.SA, we made sure that our criminal case was against physical persons and not moral persons, in clear, we are prosecuting mr — --- and not the company , and the judge accepted this prosecution and acted upon this by freezing mr ----- funds.
It seems that the justice is putting the heat on them as we speak , and this is why they are trying to get out of this mess they put themselves and aleccohfx investors into.
I hope this will bring an end to this story very soon and it is not another stalling technique by these crooks.
Goodspeed
Good Day
aleccoh
Such is life in the world of the undercapitalized. Let�s hope the new laws in the U.S. and Switzerland close the book on these all too common �bankruptcies.�
That is a very solid idea. In fact, if you investigate the website further, you will see that every Wednesday evening between 8PM and 9PM New York Time, signals are posted for the following day at: for that very specific purpose. This of course, allows anyone to verify their validly before making the decision to join us.
We provide this upfront information due to claims and testimonials regarding past results being meaningless as they can be doctored to look like anything you wish and thus almost impossible to verify.
As far as posting our signals every day� that would certainly be less than fair to our Neanderthal Brothers and Sisters who have had the confidence and insight to join our clan.
So check out the Wednesday signals. We welcome your scrutiny.
One final thought� when you discover Cavemanforex is valid, we believe a retraction of your baseless and scurrilous accusations would be appropriate. You might even want to pony up the $89.
Regards,
Cavemanforex Support
Ok, when Forex Saviour first posted his review of this website, I checked it out out of curiosity. I tried the signals and they worked out…but was it just a coincidence? I also took a screen shot of the results and put them in Excel for a couple of other reasons.
This week I checked again to try the new signals, and now the past results are different. So perhaps the “upfront signals” distracts one from the “doctored” past results that now look better than they were…who remembers past results anyways. :rolleyes:
Screen shot #1 is how the results looked last week
Screen shot #2 is the results currently displayed and is 160 pips more than last week 4/17 to 5/15.
Waz up with that??
You are absolutely correct.
If you go back and reread our post, no where does it say to use past results. In fact it says we do not believe in them for the very reason you bring up.
All we suggest is you keep an eye on the Wednesday �Signals�.
We continually test several variations in our never ending search for simple and solid profits.
When an improvement is discovered, it is immediately sent to all our members and the results are then updated to reflect this change.
The last update was on Tue May 27, 08. The following email was sent to all our members on that day:
�Hello Fellow Forex Troglodytes,
So far this week we have happily netted 120 pips in the first two days.
In our never ending effort to improve profitability and reduce risk, we have
slightly tweaked the Cavemanforex formula Order Parameters. The following
changes would have added 35 pips to our results this week.
The changes are as follows:
�[U]Sorry Sweet Pip, this line is proprietary[/U]�
Stop Loss has been adjusted down 5 pips.
Take Profit has been adjusted up 5 pips.
These minor adjustments add a 5 pip overall gain with every order that
triggers, regardless of it’s outcome, while changing our entry point by only
2-3 pips.
The new Cavemanforex pdf is attached along with an updated Order Spreadsheet
Calculator reflecting the changes.
Good Trading,
Cavemanforex Support �
Obviously it makes no sense to have results from a formula that is not the same as the one we are currently using.
As [U]you[/U] personally just stated [B][I]�I tried the signals and they worked out�[/I][/B]. Your very own testimonial should be good enough for you.
As for coincidence, keep watching the Wednesday results. There is no rule saying you must get on board today or ever. Time will tell and we�re not going anywhere, though we my take Forex Savior�s advice and raise the price.
We welcome your questions.
Sincerely,
Cavemanforex
Alright Caveman, in the interest of fairness, I’ll take you up on your offer! I’m calling it “The Caveman Challenge.”
Dear Mr. Forex Savior,
Though we do not know who you are, or your true motivations, you seem to be a stand-up guy and appear to be one of the few voices in these forex forums with an open mind and a genuine concern for the average trader out there, so we�ll go out on a limb and trust you to report on this endeavor accurately and honestly.
With the �Caveman Challenge� being subject to only the Wednesday results, this would have to go on for 15 weeks or more. While we enjoy the publicity, the dialog in these forums, for whatever reason, seems to lean towards �unpleasantness� on this subject, so we don�t see how dragging it out that long will benefit anyone. To shorten up the challenge we have decided to take you up on your original offer.
As discussed earlier, posting the daily signals in the forum is not fair to our existing clientele. We will, however provide you personally for the next 3 weeks with the daily signals/results under the following 2 conditions.
-
Should our daily signals, prior to the market they refer to, turn up on any forums, we will terminate the challenge.
-
As you can see from the Wednesday results, not every day is a winner nor could one realistically expect that. We all know there are going to be negative days in this or any other market. To that end we would ask you to refrain from reporting on the results till the Friday close of each week.
As we have no idea how many forums you are involved with, in the interest of complete fairness, we will leave it up to you to inform the people who follow your posts in all the forums you participate in.
There will be no signal for this coming Friday June 6, 2008 due to the US Employment Situation report coming out which, as I�m sure you know, produces unpredictable swings in the price on the first Friday of every month. We also do not trade on days with scheduled FOMC announcements, next one being June 25th 08, for the same reason.
All we need is a way to get in touch with you.
Sincerely,
Cavemanforex.com
oh, so if i talk crap about you will you give me free signals too? LOL.
man up and post the signals for a limited time. lets see what you got.
Come on guys this is as fair as it could get. While not a fan of signals services forex saviour will be able to see whether things work in real time without there being any disadvantage to paying clients. I for one have some respect for an outfit prepared to do this. At the very least it shows they have some confidence in their own methods
a fine idea. but why don’t we keep it simple for now and fully transparent with the public. see my post above