Going offshore to escape the CFTC

SIMPLEFX

Is this a retail spot forex broker who will accept new US clients?

I have had an account for a while, but have not used it much.
It’s what they call a “Real Account” meaning a “Live Account”
[EDIT] they do offer an MT4 platform, and possibly MT5, in
addition to their Web based interface.

USING A VPN WITH AN ENDPOINT IN CANADA,
I tried to sign up and received this Terms and Conditions link:

As you can read, the issue of U.S. persons is addressed…

USING A U.S. VPN ENDPOINT, there is a flat refusal for U.S. persons
based on IP geolocation… see image attached

[EDIT] Having said this, SimpleFX is an impressive offering, and are
simply complying with the CFTC “nanny state” pressures on what
is obviously a well managed service.

[EDIT] they offer crypto funded as well as “fiat” currency accounts,
but I don’t know what the “verification” procedure is for the “fiat”
accounts… Originally it was a BitCoin only broker, I believe… but
clearly they have since expanded their scope.

hyperscalper

PUBLIC FORUM STATUS

I’m sure everyone here is aware that, as a public forum, this
is a great way for adversaries to glean information which
could target specific brokers, or even forum members…

Any thoughts on this, @Clint ? Any options for a private,
verified member status forum where we could speak more
freely?

hyperscalper

Short answer: not anymore…

I used to trade with SimpleFX before 1broker was taken down. As a US citizen, trading with them now violates the new terms of service. Personally, I am not comfortable depositing funds while clearly violating terms of service.

Couple thoughts on this…

The idea of a private forum is a good one. We really shouldn’t need one, but the situation is bad right now.
I am interested in staying in contact even if the forum goes private.

However, if I may expound a bit, I think the key might be in affecting change in policy here at home.
I love the USA and our founding principles. We need to change some of these recent laws.
They belong in a dictatorship, and have no place in our free Republic.

Sadly, there doesn’t appear to be any interest in repealing FATCA in either major political party.
It makes money and both parties like to spend.

Traders and expats are getting serious grief from this law. I don’t think it is intentional (i.e. we’re not the target), but I also don’t think
most of our politicians really care.
We make up a tiny percent of the population and they are generating billions of dollars from FATCA.
Our lost opportunities are collateral damage.

Perhaps the best solution is to push for more reasonable laws on domestic brokers, or a license traders can obtain to trade freely (agreed we shouldn’t have to, but change what you can).

I pay a lot in taxes. I declare my income.
Plus, I bring money home to the US to spend in the US.
There is really no logical reason for the government to inhibit my trading.
Also, encouraging brokers to set up shop here would generate more jobs and tax revenue.

This game of whack a mole on brokers is not ideal and I don’t like the trajectory. I am sure there are some people with some power to affect change.
Is there something we can do to secure our trade here at home within the system?
There is a lot of brain power here in this forum and many people more legally inclined than I. What can we do?

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Excellent post - I’d love to see some brains come together and see what we can figure out. You’re so right about traders getting the crap end. I’d elaborate but it’d be too much and you’ve already made a few clear and valid points.

This is a really good idea, but I don’t know how it could be implemented? There have been several times over the years I wanted to discuss something but didn’t feel like handing over my plans to some bureaucrat. No doubt they keep an eye on things here.

Coinbase has linked with Paypal for instant withdrawals. Get yourself a Paypal debit card and have convenient access to your funds like we did ten years ago. It will be interesting to see how long it lasts before some bureaucrat feels the need to ‘protect’ me.

Coinbase abandons its cautious approach with plan to list up to 30 new cryptocurrencies

Orbex: You can select United States, which yields the following message…
Based on your selected country, please note that your trading account will be under Orbex LIMITED a company registered in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

It appears all of their (Orbex) accounts have commission built into the Bid/Ask
spread with no option of variable spread plus commission pricing. And
also there don’t appear to be any crypto transfer facilities.

Also their minimum funding seems high, with $5k for their Premium
"Variable Spread" account which still has no commission. So it doesn’t
make a lot of sense to me, they are giving you “variable spread” but
not segregating or quoting a commission rate? I guess they need
this for revenue…

[EDIT] Nevertheless… they do cater to U.S. persons, so I don’t want
to be too negative just by looking at the website…

[EDIT] ESMA Product Intervention

hyperscalper

Brokers that ACCEPT US Clients

https://pcmbrokers.com/ their website is just a bank screen with a contact form. But looks like they’ve

rebranded themselves as FXPCM & they accept us clients but will verifying their documents. Had a chat with their reps.


Had a chat with the brokers listed below and they confirmed that they do not accept US clients

Not a broker, an auto trading platform that only works with regulated brokers.

Yes HYCM was formerly HY Markets

B2B, not a forex broker. Offers crypto currency exchange white labels

Yes the SVG note does come up but when I chatted with them they said no

Orbex

its a foreign currency exchange platform not a forex broker!


Not clear from their websites if they accept US clients, so sent them am email. Will update here once I hear back from them

DubaiFXM did not deny that they do not take US client but insisted on a phone number, which I wasn’t keen on sharing. So it seems like they might take US clients. Sent them an email as well, will update when they get back

Was able to set up an account with them after selection location as United States. Am waiting for them confirm though


Out of Business

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I use Hugosway(without issues so far), I noticed they were not on your list?

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@jessoprules they are JAFX copycats & from what’s been posted around on all forums they seem to the the same guys. Not sure they are fit for this list. they’re already in trouble with cftc. why list a broker who is already on radar with regulators? And since you’ve with JAFX as well you must have noticed the start similarities ?

ESMA REGULATORS INTENT

hyperscalper

This is very interesting.
I’ve read this reasoning in other quotes and other articles.

The gist is that the government is worried, because a large percentage of people lose a lot of money.
I can understand this concern from an empire building angle. You definitely don’t want large capital outflows. “and ensuring CFDs are only marketed and sold to consumers who understand the risks from trading these types of products”, can we take a written test? Or, should this be read ‘only marketed and sold to customers that are already filthy rich’?

The problem with outright banning anything simply because it is statistically dangerous is that you end up with a totalitarian state. Ban alcohol, sports cars, 4 wheelers, jetskis, sex, and just lock citizrns up in 4x4 cell with only bland food. They are so much safer that way.
But, that’s not the government’s call to make in a free society.
Solve the problem another way besides taking away people’s freedom to use their own free will.

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Hilarious. They wouldn’t want the hard-working class becoming financially free or anything. I guess it is good that they still allow online gambling then.

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Hello All,

So first, I have been coming here for years and would like to say Thank You to everyone as this forum as been both informative and enlightening.

Actually, I’ve been coming here for about 6 years after moving back from Ukraine, LOL, I MISS the freedom of living in Ukraine. I didn’t have to find forums like this to open account as I had my permanent resident card over there.

I’m not one to post unless I think I have something to add, I’m passing this along with what info I have for your information.

I heard about this broker while looking into trading stocks. There are quite a few US, day traders who trade with this company and most of them recommend them over another broker that they use.

The Broker is cmelitegroup. I don’t want to post a direct link not only because it’s my first post but you have to sign an Indemnity Agreement to access the site and I’m not sure if a link on another site would invalidate that maybe @Clint could check that out.

If you go to the site and can’t getting pass the Indemnity Agreement try selecting “I Disagree” and than select “I Agree”.

There is a reference about MT4 on their Forex page so I sent an email this is the reply;

Hello,

I Recently opened a demo account with your firm. I am most interested in trading Forex as opposed to the other instruments, with that said I have some questions;

  1. I see a reference to MT4 on your Forex page, Is this platform available?

  2. What if any are the platform fee’s?

  3. Is there a data feed Fee for Forex for the MT4 Platform?

  4. If MT4 is not available what is the data feed fee for your other platforms?

Best Regards,
Gregory

CME Client Services
Dec 10, 2018, 3:52 AM (1 day ago)
to me

Hello Gregory,
Thank you for contacting Capital Markets Elite Group.
Please find below the responses to your questions:

Yes. The MT4 platform is available.
There is no platform fee.
There is no additional data feed subscription
Please see the first response.

You may contact us with additional questions at any time. We look forward to hearing from you.
Best regards,
Donna Noreiga

Manager | Client Services Department

I have followed up with the following email as there is no link to MT4 and the demo I requested is is for their Traders Elite Pro, also they have 2 different account types so I wanted to ask which one would I use to signup.

Hello Donna,

Is it possible to demo the MT4 Platform?
Also, if I was wanting to signup mainly to trade Forex which account type should I use?

Best Regards,
Gregory

I’m waiting for a reply I’ll post an update.

Their Standard account requires 2500$ deposit ( After looking at the site again looks like one has to open a standard account for Forex)

I close this by saying No I as of yet do not have an account, I’ve been using TW and as I don’t have spread sensitive strategies I haven’t seen the need to move my account, however with the new card issues (beginning to feel like I live in a socialist country) I have started looking at other options.

Again Thanks to All of you who have contributed to this forum.

Best Regards,
Gregory
AKA, OnTheEdge

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@HyperScalper – I was trying to find the post that you published regarding coinexx execution times between MT4 and MT5, but I cannot seem to find it. I am currently using MT4, but am considering making the move to MT5. I do manual trading, so do you think that the latency would be mostly negligible?

Thanks.

Yes. I think it would be negligible. In my case, I used populations of individual
MT5 terminals, and I decided that their memory footprint was far greater and less
predictable than MT4 within the context of NJ4X dot com executions. It was
saturating 16gb of memory on my server when we got up toward 30 instances,
and found certain workarounds to limit memory usage, but decided finally
to drop back to MT4 until forced to deal again with MT5…

This is for mainstream Forex only; no others… So one instance of MT5 on
most systems would use extra memory; but would not be noticeable on a
modern system…

[EDIT] as for execution times also you would not notice any differences
for most manual trading; and, of course, if you use Pending/Limit style
orders then (in theory) those are already on the server (not sure about
that) so “reaction time” is not a factor…

hyperscalper

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I took a quick look at CME Group, a.k.a. CMEG, Capital Markets Elite Group, and cmelitegroup.com mentioned by Gregory (screen-name OnTheEdge) above.

This broker is domiciled in Trinidad and Tobago, and claims some sort of partnership with ETX Capital (FCA-regulated broker in the UK).

Regarding the Indemnity Agreement which Gregory referred to: Here’s a screen-shot.
Click the image to enlarge it.



Personally, I have no problem with such a Disclaimer. In fact, I like it. I think all offshore brokers should operate this way. You may recall a POST I wrote a long time ago suggesting something similar.

Anyway, thanks to Gregory for pointing us toward this prospect.

I’ll ask the rest of you to dive in and vet this broker further.

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