Going offshore to escape the CFTC

According to the latest report from FinanceFeeds, there is actually 2 people being sued here:

  • General Trader Fulfillment (GTF) based in Utah
  • Tallinex (St Vincent/Grenadines; maybe Estonia)

If GTF is an IB of Tallinex, then they might take the fall for Tallinex violations. But it is still unclear who at GTF will be summoned. Not sure how Tallinex can be served if they are not actually in the USA. And if so, who would appear?

Was wondering if @Clint or anyone has any insight on this. Would love if Tallinex could come here and clarify some things.

If im reading that article right, it appears that Tallinex was actively representing that they were legally authorized to do business in the USA when they actually werenā€™t.

The distinction may be between accepting US clients like some brokers vs Tallinex who appears to have falsely stated they were licensed to do business in the US.

HI

We also have an account with TW, and recently we closed all our accounts with CCM that were transferred from Tallinex. We got all our money back within 3 days.

We are also thinking to open an account with FinPro, they have promotion that will charge us only $2 commission per 1LOT (100K) round trip. That is insane. It seems to good to be true.
How they can afford this, this unheard of anywhere. Also they have no fees to withdraw money only whatever the banks charge with the wire transaction.

Anybody can comment? It seems more people were concern before that their conditions are too good to be true.

Been trading with Finpro for a couple months (along w/ TW) and havenā€™t had any issues. Withdrawals have been fine as well. Finpro has better margins and spreads for energy and metals. Fairly impressed with them so far.

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hey clint, or anyone on this thread, i started trading live as i mentioned that i would a couple weeks ago on this thread.
and iā€™d love to share my experience so far with my broker, but iā€™m wonderingā€¦

your work on this thread along with so much great input from others has attracted a lot of attention, probably also from the nannies.

is giving praise to my broker on this site just an invitation to draw cftc attention to it?

Hello everyone,

I was just wondering if anyone has some first-hand experience with PaxForex?

I have read through most of the messages in this thread and have found only one person who has been using it for a long time.

I would really appreciate some responses about how safe this broker is.

My main reason for asking is that I am trying to find a broker that offers cent accounts. From my research, Pax seems to be the only one.

If anyone knows another, please let me know.

Thank you in advance for everyone that has put so much helpful information on this thread.

If you live in the US and you open an account in another jurisdiction YOU are violating the law.

While the CFTC is unlikely to give a crap if you have some dinky little 1k account ā€¦ they will care if you accomplish your objectives and that account grows.

Opening accounts in offshore jurisdictions just isnā€™t smart. There are reporting requirements for anyone that handles large amounts of money regarding reporting on US dollar denominated accounts. Youā€™re asking to have the CFTC knocking on your door.

Now if you have a small tiny little account, and you canā€™t trade for crap so youā€™re losing money ā€¦ then the CFTC is unlikely to care about you or where your account happens to be open.

But if you think itā€™s possible that your trading skill will improve and youā€™ll finally be able to grow your account ā€¦ and you actually do that ā€¦ the CFTC is quite likely to whack you, and you wonā€™t like it.

Iā€™m not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, so take the above with a grain of salt.

This has been discussed plenty before. Itā€™s still a gray area whether or not the CFTC will come after you. However if you are a baller trader then youā€™ll tread rough seas with the IRS.

IMO once you become proficient in FX then you are better off going straight to Futures and trading currency pairs there.

YES!

Iā€™ve been trying to tell people that trading forex futures and using options gives you far more leverage, gives you far more trading tactics that you can apply and most forex people look at me like Iā€™m speaking greek or something!

I have an account at Ampfutures that I have used on the past for trading NGas. They have many platforms as well as Mt5.

Only thing is no hedging.

Hello Mayzee17, I dont think that is a well thought statement. Every asset class is different and has its own proā€™s and conā€™s. For example selling options on CME will give you at best 10X leverage which means about $4500 per one lot of Crude Oil, however it might be different when you buy and Option, BUT then you are paying THETA, which will almost always work against you (think volatility smirk)

Let me make matter a little more difficult . Imagine you want to do pairs trading between two currency pairs or two commodities. You will need kill account size to stay market neutral because you can NOT trade fractional lots in futures and will strugle finding smallest LCM between the notional values of your trades

Now let me go a little tangent. And speaking from purely my personal opinions, I dont think that we should be told about how to invest my money. AND definitely not by Uncle SAM or Mr. Big Ben.

CFTC keeps targetting Forex and Forex brokers because they almost killed the volume on CME.

If you think uncle SAM cares about you, think again.

Uncle SAM also knows that smoking is bad, BUT you can smoke as much as you want by paying extra traxes on cigarettes and worse still now you can even smoke marijuana in some US states, Yes Legally. But whats even bad that you can not trade Forex with offshore brokers because there is no tax profits for Uncle Sam.

Okay coming back to point. No, I dont think any asset class is better that another, weather its stocks, or futures or FOREX.

If you want to avoid CFTC crap, try opening an account with BitCoins

alright i gotta chime in about the last few posts, however i am new to this game and thus i may be driving out of my lane here.

butā€¦

i disagree with the statements about trading offshore being illegal but small peanuts to the irs. again, this is not what i KNOW, rather itā€™s what i THINK.

i was under the impression that it is not illegal to trade with an offshore broker. itā€™s just, i thought, illegal for them to solicit to me in the states.

mayzee, i have every intention of reporting my income gains or losses to the irs. if i score a profit of $1 million and pay my 400,000k to uncle sam and file all the necessary foreign account paperwork, why is the irs or cftc gonna come after me?

iā€™m not being argumentative, so please donā€™t read it with that inflection, iā€™m truly just asking out of naivety because i really thought that i was not violating anything.

As long as you report your earnings to the IRS, going offshore should not be a problem.

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That is correct; it is completely legal to open up a business in another country with the proper tax treatment and so on. Itā€™s just another barrier to entry for people new to Forex (like myself) who donā€™t want to pay thousand(s) of dollars just to see if they can even turn a profit.

There are multiple ways to do it. It might not be a service your accountant offers per se, but they should be able to refer you to someone who can help you set everything up, including the offshore bank account and whatever else is necessary to help you easily move your money around and trade hassle-free. Once all thatā€™s done, itā€™s done, and your accountant can handle the rest come tax time.

Itā€™s a no-brainer to me to head in this direction once youā€™re making real money. That said, this thread is still great for those of us just getting started and the efforts of everyone involved over the years much appreciated.

Cantor Exchange just did a pretty cool update. They added trading view charts so you can customize the charts with indicators of your choosing. Liquidity is also a lot better than a year ago when I first joinedā€¦

tradewisefx doesnā€™t seem to be accepting new US clients anymore :frowning:
I wonder what will happen to existing US clients

@MorpheusZ

According to the TradeWiseFX website, you are correct.

Iā€™m waiting for confirmation from Nasir Lakhany (TradeWiseFX rep) before deleting them from our List.

anyone has experience regarding what happens to existing US clients after this happens? is anyone still trading with a broker that stopped accepting US clients?

In the past with other brokers, they would let my existing trades run until I closed them.

anyone from the US still trading with a broker that stopped accepting new US clients?
are those brokers under pressure to kick their existing US clients?