I set a live acount up with FxPro.com a number of months ago. They are based in cyprus. I got an email from them this morning. I guess I will now have to go through the task of finding another broker.
Quote:
[B]Dear Client
For some time now, FxPro has recognised that the majority of our clients are resident across the European Union countries and Emerging Markets. Our impressive growth in these regions has become one of our core strengths. In acknowledgement of this and following a strategic business assessment we have made the decision to withdraw our services for Canadian residents to ensure we continue to deliver FxPro’s high level of service to the majority of our clients.
As a Canadian resident according to our records, you are affected directly by our above decision therefore we are informing you of the process to wind down your accounts. We appreciate the importance of this and we apologise for any inconvenience this development may cause. In order to make every effort to treat all clients fairly and to reduce any impact on your trading activity we wish to give you a full three-month notice period prior to implementation, therefore allowing you sufficient time to conclude your trading activity, and manage your portfolios successfully.
Procedure for managing existing Trading Accounts:
This applies to all Trading Accounts which belong to Canadian residents
From the transmission of this letter to 17th September 2010, 24:00 no change in the trading services (deposits, withdrawals and trading will be available as normal).
As of 18th September 2010 no further deposits will be accepted to the Trading Accounts (trading and withdrawals continue as normal).
At the closing of the day of the 19th November 2010 (00:00 Server Time) all affected Trading Accounts are expected to have NO Open Positions. At the same time ALL Pending Orders will be cancelled, and All Open Positions will be automatically closed at that time at the last available price.
After the 19th November 2010, the status of these Trading Accounts will be set to “Read Only” in the MT4 Trading Platform, meaning that NO Trading activity can be performed, but fully accessible for reference, historical analysis and final withdrawal of funds.
If you have received this communication in error and are not a Canadian resident we strongly urge you to contact our Backoffice department, who will guide and assist you accordingly.
Following this notice, we will subsequently send out reminder notices by email to Canadian resident FxPro traders only, one month prior and one week prior to 19th November 2010.
Thank you for taking the time to read this update.
Yes this is unfortunate news, I was with FXPro for a year (ever since FXCM closed their doors). As a programmer I’ve grown really attached to MetaTrader in this past year and am now looking for a similar broker that offers service to Canadians, any suggestions?
Ducascopy is a good choice, Alpari, Windsor Brokers,
I opened an account with Forex Metal in Panama, they offer a debit card/credit card so withdrawing money is very easy, however compared to
FxPro, their executions take way too long - average 3-5 seconds, if you scalp it is not a broker for you, in addition on some other forum there is an investigation about some guy that had the hardest time withdrawing his money, but then again it could be competition tactics. I did not put a lot of money with this broker so I can see just how good they are
Any ideas as to what the real reasons behind it were? Haven’t heard of any recent legislative changes in Canada regarding Forex. Dumping Canadian customers to provide better services simply makes no sense to me.
Hard to say, It could be that there are some agreements between brokers themselves, let face it, it is getting harder and harder for North American based brokers to compete, in addition you get free futures and stock quotes through FXPro (perhaps not of the greatest quality but nevertheless free) I am sure that some of the data providers in North America are not particularly happy about that. Some of my friends who are full time traders had a hard time believing me when I told them I am getting free quotes on SP500 futures,oil,etc.
My broker of choice WAS GFT until yesterday. No Canadian
residents allowed, not even GFT UK. I called customer service
resulting in the bland “new regulations” answer.
Have to say the confirmed withdrawal completed only a few
hours later.
What next? I have to look for a Cyprus bucket shop or move
to a BRIC country?
I have been with FXDD for 4 years and never had a problem. Several months ago they moved my account to their Malta operation. I believe it was because I was non-American, not because I was Canadian. Anyway haven’t noticed any change in my service, so I can recommend.
I have an American friend with GO Markets in Australia. That might be a good alternative.
I want to share my experience of the broker I trade with - Deltastock. It is not very popular but
offers stuff I haven’t seen with other brokers
With their platform I can trade with 4 brokers simultaneously -
IB, DBFX, FXCM, and DeltaStock, (City FX and Ducascopy coming soon),
or with a single one of them and there is no need to open several accounts, but just one! The margin is also the same for all brokers.
Each broker offers different prices and I can see and choose the best one offered.
If the spread goes too wide, I can place fixed spread order with Deltastock.
It was pure luck I’ve found them and I recommend that you give them a try.
I noticed FXDD closes their MT4 feed at 23:00 or 4pm EST on Friday. This is not the popular method though and in result any automated pivot point calculations end up being incorrect… thus I cannot go with them.
I just tried to sign up with FX Clearing.ca which has an office in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The fine print in their site reads “ATTENTION: FX Clearing Group Inc. does not solicit residents of Ontario/Canada to open trading accounts. Accounts for Canadian and US citizens (regardless of residence), or for residents of Canada (regardless of citizenship) are not accepted”.
I went to their site and into their chat room and asked whats up? Their answer was they have an office in Canada only to satisfy “Fintrac” which is Canada’s anti-money laundering act. I emailed their Canadian office and got no reply.
Of the 2 canadian brokers that did give me a favourable reply were SmarttradeFX and InvesttechFX, Anyone had dealings with these two. I would like to go with SmarttradeFX but they have no track record.
There’s been a thread here on BP by someone who was badly treated by InvesttechFX but when the stuff started hitting the proverbial fan and becoming public InvesttechFX suddenly turned around and reimbursed the guy and the thread was deleted.
That was a while ago and I have never had any personal experience with them.
Yeah, I found that bad review on another site "forex-trading-domain.xxx’’ and the guy really trashed them. Maybe he just hit a bad day, but…
I would really like to know about SmarttraderFX. I like the hype on their site and their MT4 platform worked well for me in demo. They have sent me an email asking me to sign up for a live account with some upgrades thrown in, but they are probably small time as there isn’t anyone that can give me a reference. Also I researched the principles and they are all young guys with very little in years of experience (strictly my opinion). I need that fuzzy feeling.
Found another really bad review from another trader on “trade2win.xxx” forum. Maybe this company (InvestTechFX) is bad news and not one that us newbies want to deal with.
