Going offshore to escape the CFTC

Broker Discussion Forex Brokers
2502

There is a thread here at babypips titled: “FinFX Brokerage Overview”. In the first post of that thread it says, “It appears that Finland doesn’t consider Forex trading as an ‘investment’ on part with equities and such. Thus it’s unregulated. This is probably a big reason why it’s easy for U.S. customers to get set up here”.

That thread (and that particular post I mentioned above) was created 2 years ago. My question is: Is it [U]still[/U] true that the country of Finland is unregulated, in regards to their forex brokers?

I ask this because there is a broker from Finland named “FXtradeweb”, and on their website under FAQ it says:

[B]Question:[/B] “What regulations do you have?”
[B]Answer:[/B] “FXtradeweb OÜ is a registered Financial Services Provider for the Provision of Currency Exchange Services. Registration code VVT000310 registered by The Ministry of Economic Activities Estonia, a member of the European Union.”

Sooo… does that mean FXtradeweb is regulated?

I am just trying to figure out if Finland now has regulation for their forex brokers, and if FXtradeweb (of whom is from Finland) is regulated.

2503

Your post is the longest post I’ve read in a while. I guess you had a lot of stuff to get off your chest.

You certainly changed your opinion of Forex Broker Inc in the 9 months between THIS POST and now.

If I correctly understand your first bad experience, your basic quarrel with Forex Broker Inc was that you believed they would allow you to hold an unlimited number of open positions — BUT, they decided to cut you off because your automated trading system placed 500 trades in one day, and they said that this was putting their servers on [I]Full Tilt.[/I] Have I got it right, so far?

Maybe the problem is the definition of “unlimited number of open positions”.

I can envision a situation in which a trader with one or more robust EA’s, running on some heavy-duty home computer equipment, could burden just about any retail broker’s system capacity. And I’m thinking that the broker in such a situation has the right — and, indeed, the necessity — to relieve that burden, by limiting or banning that trader.

I’m wondering: When you did your due-diligence on Forex Broker Inc, did you discuss candidly with them your intention to place 500 orders per day?

As for your second bad experience with this broker, I don’t think I quite understand the entire sequence of events, and all of your correspondence back and forth. But, it’s possible that, by the time I got to that point in your post, my eyes were glazing over.

I’m glad that you got your funds returned to you from Forex Broker Inc. And I’m glad to hear that ProfiForex is living up to your expectations.

2504

Thanks for the reply Clint. No, actually I put the details in just so other traders would know the duplicity of the character and competence of this brokerage staff. Over the last 5 years I’ve lost $10,000s in the Forex Industry, which isn’t a big deal, but it has been disappointing that there are so many schemes out there, and the ways the different brokerages structure their account parameters making it necessary to put each one through an interrogative check list before even beginning to test different strategies on their platforms.

[/QUOTE]You certainly changed your opinion of Forex Broker Inc in the 9 months between THIS POST and now. [/QUOTE]

Their Customer Service was great at the beginning, but once they get your money, its another story. My experience with this broker has proven it.

[/QUOTE]If I correctly understand your first bad experience, your basic quarrel with Forex Broker Inc was that you believed they would allow you to hold an unlimited number of open positions — BUT, they decided to cut you off because your automated trading system placed 500 trades in one day, and they said that this was putting their servers on [I]Full Tilt.[/I] Have I got it right, so far?

Maybe the problem is the definition of “unlimited number of open positions”.

I can envision a situation in which a trader with one or more robust EA’s, running on some heavy-duty home computer equipment, could burden just about any retail broker’s system capacity. And I’m thinking that the broker in such a situation has the right — and, indeed, the necessity — to relieve that burden, by limiting or banning that trader. [/QUOTE]

I agree with you about the problem it could cause for their servers for an enormous amount of orders to be sent rapidly, but just upfront with me. Don’t flatter me with lies and then change your story after I invest my time proving my strategies are successful on your demo accounts, and then tell me that it is not allowed on your live accounts.

[/QUOTE]I’m wondering: When you did your due-diligence on Forex Broker Inc, did you discuss candidly with them your intention to place 500 orders per day?[/QUOTE]

Yes, when I inquired of their chat personnel, support staff, and assigned manager about my intentions of opening over 1,000 orders per day on many accounts, not just 500, they uniformly said “no problem”, but obviously they do not work in the Dealing Desk Department.

[/QUOTE]As for your second bad experience with this broker, I don’t think I quite understand the entire sequence of events, and all of your correspondence back and forth. But, it’s possible that, by the time I got to that point in your post, my eyes were glazing over.[/QUOTE]

I hope no one else has any problems with them, but if their trades are closing before the “hard stops” that were sent to the broker’s servers, the details are here as a testament of their previous behavior.

[/QUOTE]I’m glad that you got your funds returned to you from Forex Broker Inc. And I’m glad to hear that ProfiForex is living up to your expectations.[/QUOTE]

Thank you for all the time you devote to this forum and this thread for the US Traders in particular. It was very resourceful for me when I needed it. I am an Expatriate now, so the playing field is much bigger. Best regards

2505

Been away for a bit. However I just got an email today from Trader’s Way indicating that they now accept PayPal so I wanted to pass it along. The only other broker I know of that accepts US clients and also has a PayPal account is AssetsFX. I deposited using PayPal with AssetsFX and they covered half of the PayPal transaction fees. I am sure you guys know about others who do too.

I feel much better using PayPal than having my processed God knows where. I am surprised that a lot of these brokers don’t use it. Perhaps PayPal makes it difficult for these brokers to open an account.

2506

I’ve scanned the other threads here on the Forex Brokers forum, looking for brokers that we have not yet vetted here in the Offshore Brokers thread. Of the names that popped up in those other threads, I have determined that the following brokers will not accept U.S. clients, and I will be adding them to Group 2 in our List:

AvaTradeEU Ltd (Ireland)

Ava Capital Markets Australia Pty Ltd (Australia)

PrimeFX (New Zealand)

Tenko FX (New Zealand)

XM.com (Cyprus / New Zealand) — see Trading Point (Cyprus)

XE Markets (Malaysia) — see Trading Point (Cyprus)

IV Brokers (Belize)

Gallant Capital Markets (B.V.I.) — see Yadix (B.V.I.)

Sterling Gent Trading Ltd (B.V.I.)

Yadix (B.V.I.)

Gainsy Inc (St. Vincent and the Grenadines)

Edit — the 11 brokers listed above have been added to Group 2 in the Offshore Broker List

The following brokers require further vetting, and will not be added to our List at this time:

FXT Swiss (Switzerland) — out of business ?

Vector Securities (Russia) — accepts U.S. clients ?

ATIG Securities (Turkey) — accepts U.S. clients ?

FXDirect Group AG - FXD24 (Panama) — accepts U.S. clients ?

PFG FX (British Virgin Islands) — accepts U.S. clients ?

Larson&Holz (B.V.I. / St. Vincent ?) — accepts U.S. clients ?

Prime FX Market — primefxmarket.com — ?

Hearing no objection to my suggested reorganization of the first three posts in this thread, I will plan to do that reorganization sometime this week.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, scroll back to post #2332 for an explanation.

2507

MRC Markets are cheats. I had an account with them over 10k. It is over 4 months since I closed my account however, my application for withdrawing funds are still in pending with them. My story is up on Forex Peace Army. I strongly suggest discarding MRC Markets from your lists as a broker so that no one has to suffer like me.

2508

Our Offshore Broker List applies only one filter to the scores of international brokers that we vet:

Will they do business with U.S. residents?

If they will, they are added to Group 1 on our List. If they will not, they go into Group 2.

Our List should not be taken as a list of “recommended brokers”, without further due diligence.

Most participants on this forum would probably tell you that our List represents a “mixed-bag” of brokers, as far as strength, stability, honesty and reliability are concerned. A few of the best brokers in the world are on our List. And a few rascals are on it, as well.

We try to warn our readers of potential problems with the brokers on our List, when those problems come to our attention. Your experience with MRC Markets certainly warrants a warning to our readers, and I will add a reference to your post #2339 in the MRC entry on our List.

Welcome to Babypips, and welcome to this thread, by the way!

_____________ EDIT ______________

After posting my comments above, I attempted to access the MRC Markets website, using the link in our List, and it was blocked by my anti-malware app. Instead of the MRC website, I got this pop-up:

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
Malicious Website Blocked

www. mrcmarkets.com

I.P.: 178.236.137.236
Port: xxxxx
Type: xxxxx
Process: xxxxx

Note: I put an extra space in the web address above, so that it would not print as a link in this post.

I will add a further warning in the entry for MRC Markets, regarding the website problem.

If these issues are not resolved within one week from today, I will purge MRC Markets from our List.

Further comments?

2509

Please exercise EXTREME caution with Forex Broker Inc! Their emails state that they are from Belize (as did their website previously). I got promotion email yesterday with their old address still at the bottom:

ForexBrokerInc
Suite 102, Corner Eyre Hudson
Belize City, 102
Belize

The company used to be operated by “Noble Services Ltd” according to the website previously (as I clearly remember it written at the bottom) as well as on an a notice from the Malta Financial Services Authority:

Warning: Forex Broker Inc is not Regulated by MFSA - Forex Conclusions

This was earlier in the year. Now, go down to the bottom of the CURRENT Forex Broker Inc website and look at the new address AND company name:

The website Forex Broker Inc | Forex Trading | CFD Trading is operated by Gridley Enterprises SA., a company incorporated in the Republic of the Marshall Islands with registered address at Ajeltake Road, Ajeltake, Majuro, Marshall Islands and incorporation number 695l5.

Thus, the broker is simply an IBC that is bouncing around its ownership. It should NO LONGER be considered regulated by Belize for our purposes (we do not know whether or not it was ever regulated).

BE CAREFUL

2510

@tomd100
Thank you for the warning, this really red flags the broker. Also, the hosting location for the site is located in Russia.

2511

Good to know. You can tell that the woman on the phone had a Russian accent. This is nothing more than an IBC. I doubt they are even an ECN.

2512

tomd100 and foretradex, thanks for this information.

Apparently, Forex Broker Inc is not directly incorporated, anywhere. So, their name is misleading.

Apparently, also, there are multiple layers of shell-companies between customers of this broker and the Russians who actually run this thing.

This is from their website:

Registered Address of Head Office

Gridley Enterprises S.A., a company incorporated in the Republic of the Marshall Islands with registered address at Ajeltake Road, Ajeltake, Majuro, Marshall Islands and incorporation number 695l5, and Global Noble Services LLP, a subsidiary of Gridley Enterprises S.A., incorporated in the UK with registered address at Suite 601 Dephna House 14 Cumeberland Avenue London England NW107QL and company number OC394808.

So, if you send money to this broker, who knows where it’s actually deposited? If you trade with this broker, who knows where the servers are located which handle your trades? And, if you get into a dispute with this broker, who knows where your complaint will be adjudicated?

If they’ve bailed out of Belize, then they definitely aren’t regulated there any longer (if they ever were).

In our List, we have already moved Forex Broker Inc from Malta to Belize (last June), and now we must move them once again to a “new” location, this time in The Marshall Islands. I’ll make this change later this weekend.

Ironically, this update to our List will make Forex Broker Inc the only broker we have listed in the Pacific/Asia category in our list. That position in our List seems a little too prominent for a broker that’s looking shifty at present. But, the world is not a fair place.

On a positive note, Forex Broker Inc has a very friendly welcome sign out for U.S. traders (down there in the fine print, at the bottom of their webpages).

2513

Very tired at the moment but found this very funny. :smiley:

Last edited by Clint; Yesterday at 11:16 PM. Reason: too corect speling erors

Forex Broker Inc will continue moving westward again in a few months and will be located in central/western Asia next.

I never received responses to ANY of my emails I sent out about 2 and a half weeks ago regarding the new brokers we are working on in the prospect list/ This includes [B]ATIG Securities[/B] from Turkey. I need to try these brokers in their live chat it seems. I really want to see this Turkish broker work out as it would be something new and interesting.

By the way, [B]FXTradeWeb [/B]is now located in Estonia, with a phone number using the Estonia country code (372) and an address in the same:

Lõõtsa tn 6, Tallinn city
Harju county 11415
Estonia

Here is a link for your convenience: FXtradeweb Global FX Brokers - Contact Us

[B]Tallinex[/B], while still fashioning their previous Estonia phone number, appears to have retreated to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (let’s hope these guys don’t soon pretend to be regulated there like [B]PaxForex[/B]!)

[U]Company name[/U]: Tallinex Limited
[U]Office address[/U]: The Jaycees Building
Stoney Ground, PO Box 362, Kingstown
VC0100, St Vincent and the Grenadines
[U]Company ID[/U]: 22199 IBC 2014

Unless it is a coincidence, the appearance of “2014” proves that this change happened sometime this year.

Here is their contact page: https://www.tallinex.com/contact

I just tried the website to [B]MRC Markets[/B] and it appears to work now. Clint, would you give it another try and see if it trips your malware blocker?

2514

The reorganization of the List that I had intended to do is not possible. The problem is the maximum allowable post size. When I combined posts #1 and #2 into one post, that one post totaled over 21,000 characters. The forum limit is 15,000 characters per post.

Unfortunately, you never know how big your post is until you overrun the limit, at which point the forum tells you how much over-limit you are, but will not allow you to proceed until you cut your post down to size.

The problem turned out to be [I]the links to other posts in this thread,[/I] which I’ve been adding at the bottom of pages #1 and #2, to facilitate navigating from the List to the posts referenced in the List.

Those links (there are 84 of them) print very simply as [I]5 characters each,[/I] but the formatted URL data processed by the forum runs to [I]108 characters for each link.[/I] And those are the characters being counted.

Example: to place this link #1116 in our List requires adding this formatted URL into the Edit app:

[url =http://forums.babypips.com/forex-brokers/36221-going-offshore-escape-cftc-112.html#post301020]#1116

So, I went to Plan B.

Under Plan B, Group 1 will remain as 2 posts, and Group 2 will remain in post #3. I have not yet freed up space for an alphabetical index of all the brokers we have vetted, which was part of my original plan.

I have taken all of the links from the bottom of posts #1 and #2, and placed them in the individual broker listings to which they refer. This should make following those links much easier and faster.

Also, I’ve removed most of the red highlighting from the List, and made some cosmetic changes to the layout of the pages.

In order to get the alphabetical index placed immediately after the List, I will combine posts #4 and #5 into a new post #5, freeing up post #4 for the index.

But, not tonight.

2515

Tom, I tried the MRC Markets website again, using the link in our List.

Malwarebytes is still reacting to something, but I got a slightly different result this time.

Four days ago, when Malwarebytes blocked the MRC Markets website, it said that mrcmarkets.com was the malicious site, and it blocked the site from opening.

This time, Malwarebytes allowed me to connect to mrcmarkets.com, but said that mrcmarkets.ru was the malicious website. The IP address given for mrcmarkets.ru (178.236.137.236) is the same IP address given previously for mrcmarkets.com

I was able to navigate around the .com website, but every time I opened a new webpage, the Malwarebytes pop-up appeared again.

So, I’m not sure what’s going on. I’ll look into it later.

Thanks for the new info on FXTradeWeb and Tallinex. I will deal with them later, as well.

Edit — the updates to FXTradeWeb and Tallinex have been done.

2516

To clarify, the only one I checked was the “.com” site as I make a point to never go to “.ru” and the one that is in our list sounds very weird. I don’t currently use a program like you while navigating the web so I will not be going back to the site until Malwarebytes doesn’t get suspicious.

2517

Well, the one-week period is up, and nothing seems to have been resolved.

So, based on the difficulty that showup is having, as documented on the FPA site (HERE is a link), and based on the MRC Markets website problem that’s being flagged by Malwarebytes, later today I will remove MRC Markets (Russia) completely from our List.

Edit — MRC Markets has been removed.

2518

[B]Updates to the Offshore Broker List[/B]

[U]Group 1[/U]:

[B]Libra FX (Anguilla)[/B] has disappeared. This broker will be removed from the List.

(Change to the Group 1 broker count: 18 - 1 = 17 brokers)

[U]Group 2[/U]:

The following brokers have gone out of business, and will be removed from the List:

[B]Arab Financial Brokers (Kuwait)[/B]

[B]4RunnerForex (British Virgin Islands)[/B]

[B]Loyal Forex (British Virgin Islands)[/B]

[B]1LotStp (Nevis)[/B]

[B]1PipFix (Nevis)[/B]

[B]2PipsFixed (Nevis)[/B]

(Change to the Group 2 broker count: 151 - 6 = 145 brokers)

I will make these changes to the List later this weekend.

Edit — the changes have been made.

2519

I want to recruit some help from anyone on this thread who is willing to help.

Our vetting of the brokers listed in post #2300 has bogged down, and I’d like to get it back on track.

Here are 8 brokers which may be good additions to Group 1 in the Offshore Broker List, but they need further review. That’s where you come in, if you’re willing to help.

  1. Vector Securities (Russia)

  2. ATIG Securities (Turkey)

  3. FXDirect Group AG - FXD24 (Panama)

  4. PFG FX (British Virgin Islands)

  5. Larson&Holz (British Virgin Islands or St. Vincent ?)

  6. FXT Swiss (Switzerland)

  7. UFX Markets (Belize)

  8. AnnexFX (Estonia)

All of these brokers appear, at first glance, to accept U.S. clients. But, in each case, this needs to be confirmed by Live Chat, or email inquiry. Also, we need to do some due diligence with regards to domicile, regulation (including possible sanctions by regulators), etc.

Specific points on 4 of these brokers —

Re: Larson&Holz — the name doesn’t sound Russian, but apparently this broker is part of a large Russian company which is even described in Wikipedia

Re: FXT Swiss — this seems to be the only broker in Switzerland willing to deal with U.S. clients — we should find out why that is — also, it appears that there is a FINMA alert regarding this broker’s registration — due diligence requires that we look into that

Re: UFX Markets — is currently listed in Group 2 of our List, but their website is pretty explicit that they do accept U.S. clients — for more info, see post #2311 on this thread — FPA is investigating this broker as a possible scam — we should look into that further

Re: AnnexFX — has been discussed previously on this thread (posts #2253, #2254, and #2255), and was not included in Group 1 because of their close affiliation with AssetsFX (Finland) — currently, AnnexFX acknowledges their subsidiary relationship to AssetsFX, but they appear to be essentially autonomous — we need to explore this further — if AnnexFX is an independent, stand-alone broker, they probably deserve a place in Group 1

If you have never actually performed due diligence on a broker, this is your chance to dive in and get acquainted with the process. As I suggested above, Live Chat and/or email is the way to start. In your contacts, be professional and courteous — in almost every case, you will be treated with the same respect and courtesy.

So, any takers?

2520

Just a quick addition to this. Paypal is now officially an option(the email said they were in the process of making it one) but it’s not yet advertised on the site. You can only see it when you select deposit after signing into your account’s “private office”.

2521

I am too lazy to volunteer for anything, Clint, but since I am always on the lookout for a new broker offering highly leveraged stock index trading with a low bid ask spread, I thought I would ask Vector Securities (Forex Trading | Foreign Exchange Market | ICVector.com Forex Broker) if they accept US traders and if they provide stock index trading. I basically asked that in their live chat window, and their message was that they would respond later by email. That was over a week ago, and no response yet. About 4 days ago I left another message for them in their “live support” window, and still no answer from them. I sent another email to them today directly from my EarthLink mailbox instead of their chat window. If several other traders from here also try to contact Vector Securities and receive no answer from them maybe you should for now forget about putting Vector on your first list since no one seems to be able to even contact them.

However, Earnforex.com does provide some good reviews of this broker from foreign traders. The Forex-tsd.com forum has good reviews for Vector, too. Earnforex.com’s website also says that Vector accepts US traders. I certainly would not try to open an account with them, though, if I cannot even communicate with them. If Vector responds to my email I will let you know.