Yes, Ace… it’s basically your residency that determines what can/cannot be done.
[B]RTFX - Realtime Forex[/B] (Malta) has announced that it ceased business effective 29 May 2015.
[I]Forex Magnates[/I] has been hearing chatter suggesting that forex dealers are becoming [I]personae non grata[/I] in Malta. Here is a quote from their article on the RTFX closure —
“This latest development adds some substance to a number of market rumors heard by Finance Magnates reporters that the local regulator in Malta is attempting to squeeze foreign exchange brokers out of the island.”
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With the removal of Sensus Capital (Malta) earlier this month from Group 1 of the Offshore Broker List, that List now contains no retail forex brokers domiciled in Malta.
Anybody else having trouble making withdrawals from Tallinex with open trades? As I understand it you can still make withdrawals with open trades if you position risk accordingly but Ive been running into issues~Can anyone else comment?
There’s really nothing to comment on because you aren’t “having trouble” or “running into issues”.
If you want to move funds out of a personal account with open trades then you can do that automatically - provided the resulting true free margin (basically, free margin - any credit bonus) will be greater than the margin in use (to prevent you from inadvertently triggering an imminent stop-out of the account). If true free margin doesn’t meet the criterion then you either have to wait until it does, close some trades, or request a manual review / override.
If, however, you want to withdraw from a managed account with open trades, then that’s a different matter altogether…
For a start, the proportional lot sizing (down to 0.000001 lots) implemented by our PAMM system means that equity / margin / free margin is almost always misrepresented by MT4, so the floating P/L of any open trade can appear wrong by a factor of 10,000 because MT4 can only handle lot sizes to 2 decimal places.
A 0.000001 lot trade that was 1,000 pips negative would therefore have a true floating P/L of $-0.01, but MT4 would report the loss as $-100.00
This distortion of equity often leads managed clients to believe their account is much more profitable (or negative) than it really is, so the withdrawals they try to implement usually make no sense.
The second issue is that, depending on the strategy being traded, an individual withdrawal can wreak havoc because trade sizes are proportional to the equity/balance of the master PAMM account. If a PAMM is trading a martingale-style system then a withdrawal reduces the equity of the master PAMM account and that can result in incorrectly scaled orders in the progression. Similarly, if the strategy is based on a hedged grid then the hedge can become unbalanced, etc.
Regardless, there is always the option of detaching a managed account from the PAMM if the withdrawal is really that urgent, as this approach allows the proportionality of the remaining managed accounts to be retained.
So, as I explained at the beginning, you aren’t having issues / problems at all - there are just rules and safeguards to protect your account and/or the accounts of others. If you need to effect a withdrawal and the automated system is raising a red flag then our 24x5 live-chat team can and will assist wherever possible.
I live in the United States and am considering Tallinex. Would anyone know the numbers of the posts where regulation vs. no regulation was discussed? I was under the impression that regulated brokers have the deposits insured by the government. Is that wrong? I’m looking to learn more about fund safety before making a deposit. Thanks for any assistance.
I’ve been trading with Tallinex for 3 months now and while their customer support is superb/amazing, I’ve noticed 80% of the time I’m slipped on my entries about .5~ pips against me.
But what prompted me to post here was just recently, at about 5PM EST today during the RBNZ rate decision, not only did the NZD/USD go into a 46~ pip spread, it was locked there along with every other pair being frozen on MT4 for nearly 3 entire minutes. I’ve only experienced a freeze on tallinex in the past 3 months once before and it lasted maybe 10~ seconds. I also confirmed with someone else that they indeed experienced the same freeze as well.
But this could be considered by some the cost of business for us customers from the US to be able to trade on the high leverage offered by tallinex and no FIFO/hedge restrictions.
But as for their trust-worthyness I haven’t experienced/read anything that would lead me to not trust them. Though of course with a broker only a few years old there is some skepticism to be had, but that is nothing in specific to Tallinex themself but all newish brokers.
You’ll find that regulation offers you no real advantages - the biggest losses of client funds have been with regulated brokers and, despite what the authorities would have you believe, it’s really just a way for them to control brokers - it doesn’t provide any clear benefits to traders.
What you experienced wasn’t a server freeze - it was simply the end of the day and our LPs suspend ticks during EOD so that all accounts are marked to market at the same levels.
incog13,
Just to add to the reply from Paul (Tallinex rep.), [B]there is no government insurance[/B] for retail forex accounts in the U.S. So, pick any U.S. broker you care to name, and the funds deposited with that broker are guaranteed [B]only[/B] by the creditworthiness and integrity of that particular broker, and by nobody else.
Many other countries — the U.K., for example — provide protection to retail forex traders in the form of [I]segregated customer accounts,[/I] and [I]insurance[/I] (against loss due to bankruptcy or fraud) up to fairly sizable limits.
But, the CFTC and the NFA in this country have no interest in protecting individual traders. Instead, they are interested in forcing [I]off-exchange[/I] retail forex trading out of existence, and driving it onto a futures-style exchange under the total control of the regulators.
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Thanks very much for the replies regarding broker regulation. While I gather that the brokers in the UK (and perhaps also in Australia and Canada?) actually have insurance for retail trader accounts, I am guessing that none of them offer hedging and no FIFO for traders from the United States? If so, I guess it’s a tough situation.
Would anyone be able to point me to major cases in recent history where brokers went down and / or traders lost funds? It would be good to read about those examples in order to gauge the likelihood of that happening. Thanks.
Here are three broker scandals you might want to read about —
Refco - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
MF Global - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Peregrine Financial Group - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Also, you can [I]google[/I] Refco, MF Global and PFGBest for more articles.
On the subject of customer account segregation (or the lack thereof in the U.S.), read this post from Jason Rogers. Jason is the official representative of FXCM here on this forum (and on a few other forex forums).
http://forums.babypips.com/forex-brokers/66998-cftc-customer-funds-segregation.html#post639182
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Thanks very much Clint. I am looking forward to studying those cases soon.
Of the 12 weeks I’ve been trading with Tallinex, 40% of those days I’ve watched the charts during EOD and never once I have ever noticed the slightest freeze.
Are you really trying to tell me that the EOD caused a complete freeze for 3 minutes on the platform?
Let alone the ludicrous 49 pip spread I saw, though that would simply be chalked up to what the LP’s provide I guess.
I’d imagine I’m not the only frustrated customer that tried to trade the NZD interest rate decision that simply got to sit and stare at a frozen platform.
Yes, I remember Refco. I think that was the first broker I ever used to trade currencies. At that time they were really big, and I basically thought that they would never fail. I read that one of their employees stole hundreds of millions of dollars from their clients’ accounts or invested the money in a bad trade that plunged the company into bankruptcy. Years later I received a refund for about $ 50 from the bankruptcy proceedings which was most of the money that I had in the account when they went under. I was amazed that they really did give most of my money back, which is a testimony to the general fairness of the US bankruptcy laws in the good old US of A.
FXCM used to be one of safest brokers to trade with, incog13, but you would have to now relocate outside the US, which is a big hassle, to get the great leverage that Tallinex, for example, offers. FXCM recently warned its traders that they could be held liable for basically [B]unlimited losses [/B]in the event of another Swiss frank like melt down. I think that the safest strategy is to just trade with initially a small amount and build it up to a large amount (if you can’t do that then you shouldn’t be trading with a significant amount of money yet), then withdraw a large chunk of that money to invest or eventually invest in something like super safe apartment buildings, then repeat the process. That way, you can never lose most of your originally hard earned money.
I would like to chime in here. I have seen this happen from time to time on other brokers. Forex FS solved this inconsistency by simply stopping quotes 5 minutes before and after the rollover into the new day. This is not something that the broker has complete control over based on my observations.
[QUOTE=“compounder;705530”]Yes, I remember Refco. I think that was the first broker I ever used to trade currencies. At that time they were really big, and I basically thought that they would never fail. I read that one of their employees stole hundreds of millions of dollars from their clients’ accounts or invested the money in a bad trade that plunged the company into bankruptcy. Years later I received a refund for about $ 50 from the bankruptcy proceedings which was most of the money that I had in the account when they went under. I was amazed that they really did give most of my money back, which is a testimony to the general fairness of the US bankruptcy laws in the good old US of A. FXCM used to be one of safest brokers to trade with, incog13, but you would have to now relocate outside the US, which is a big hassle, to get the great leverage that Tallinex, for example, offers. FXCM recently warned its traders that they could be held liable for basically unlimited losses in the event of another Swiss frank like melt down. I think that the safest strategy is to just trade with initially a small amount and build it up to a large amount (if you can’t do that then you shouldn’t be trading with a significant amount of money yet), then withdraw a large chunk of that money to invest or eventually invest in something like super safe apartment buildings, then repeat the process. That way, you can never lose most of your originally hard earned money.[/QUOTE]
What I have found works for me is to spread out my fx portfolio among multiple brokers. Only funding them with what I am comfortable losing within one trade. As opposed to keeping all my eggs in one basket. Also this allow me to do one monthly withdraw per account, when applicable. Generally at no charge.
I can only say that you haven’t been very observant - our LPs have been suspending quotes while they process EOD for months.
Yes - after the SNB issue, quotes would suspend for about 5 minutes but it’s now 2-3 minutes.
Pretty much… it was either the actual spread at the time, or the difference between the last price quoted before EOD and the first quote afterwards.
The timing of the rate decision was unfortunate, but there was nothing we could do about it - if LPs suspend quotes then our hands are tied.
I would like to find out more details about the Tallinex deposit bonus. I found a bit of information on the website, but maybe I wasn’t looking in the right place.
I am wondering:
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how the bonus is cleared (at what rate, given a certain trade volume?)
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how the credit of the bonus changes the drawdown that triggers a margin call or similar event
Regarding the second question, let’s say I deposit a portion of my total trading amount, then run the account at a multiplier of a trading signal and get a large account drawdown of 80%, at which point I close all the trades. Would a 80% drawdown trigger a margin call when one also accounts for the credit from the bonus?
Thanks very much for any information.
Bonus is awarded after trading the required volume (currently 0.5 lots per $1) to cover the full amount of a deposit.
There would be no effect - bonus is added to your wallet once earned, after which you can withdraw it or transfer it to a trading account. Nothing related to bonus gets added / removed from your trading account for the very reason that it skews account equity and can result in unwarranted stop-out.
Ok, great. I am also wondering what happens if one deposits enough to quality for an ECN-PRO account, but then the equity in the account goes below $2000. Does one still retain a pro account in that case?