After checking ‘the fine print’, I was unable to find a broker fitting my definition of safety-of-funds or privacy. For a while, one was the big front-runner; until I read about some ‘special circumstances\exceptions’ under which it appears that neither of those criteria would be honored at levels I am comfortable with. Also, all of these were to be determined\altered at broker-discretion. I read, in one broker’s info on margin calls; about a practice, I consider to be particularly disturbing. Unless I’m reading this incorrectly - in the event a trader does not add funds in response to a margin call (how much of a window of time?); the broker assumes this [U]‘inaction’ to be an application for credit[/U] - to keep the position open. This experience seems to make a strong case of my need to do ‘due-diligence’ and find out whether info the brokers provide, up-front [U]and[/U] in fine print (even if regulated), is a confirmation or contradiction of my particular requirements. Although I didn’t find a broker, I did learn a valuable lesson that will help me in my search… Thanks
I am. I can’t access their site and forum. They are not accessible to US residents due to the lawsuit they are in right now. Now I am wondering how am I going to withdrawl my money if I cannot login into my account. Trading on MT4 still works though.
FXOpen is under a very large DDOS attack at the moment which affecting the main website only at the moment. If you need to withdraw, you can use any of the partner websites as they are still working. I am unable to help you with a link to a working trader’s cabinet because of babypips rules, but if you substitute “fxfrench” for “fxopen” in the .com address you can access our site and log in as normal. You will need to change the language to English yourself though since I can’t give you an english encoded link for fxfrench. 
Thanks for the info… That seemed to work!
Thank goodness! Fxfrench dot com worked and it seems like the main site is now showing.
My two cent after a while. Here’s a brief list of foreign brokers that continue accepting US customers, offer MT4, small spreads, high-leverage accounts, hedging, limit orders, no FIFO, and have no withdrawal issues whatsoever regardless of the amount: FinFX (Finland), FXCBS (British Virgin Islands), Tadawul FX (Switzerland). These are the ones I now stick to, without going as far as getting myself a non-US ID/address or company.
Once again, the Offshore Brokers List will be moved to the end of this thread, to make it easier to locate.
The broker Tadawul FX, previously listed as Swiss, is actually domiciled, registered and regulated in Cyprus. Accordingly, I am moving Tadawul FX from Page 1, under the “UK/Western Europe” heading, to Page 2, under the “Mediterranean” heading.
Here is a copy-and-paste from the Tadawul FX website:
Tadawul FX was founded by Ramzi Chamat in 2006 in Switzerland and in the course of 2008, the online forex broker expanded and relocated its head office and client operations to Cyprus, part of the European Union.
Tadawul FX is licensed by Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission also known as CySec (license number 103/09). In accordance with regulations, TDFX follows the strict rulings of CySec, adhering to precise due-diligence procedures and best practices. TDFX is also registered with the UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) with registration number 516667, as well as the German regulators BAFIN (Reg 123252) and has several authorisations and registrations from other markets such as the Netherlands, Hungary, Spain and Luxembourg.
For more transparency towards our customers, please find our European company registration and license numbers:
TADAWUL FX CYPRUS REGISTRATION: HE231759
CYSEC LICENSE NUMBER: 103/09 Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission
FSA REGISTRATION NUMBER: 516667
BAFIN REGISTRATION NUMBER: 123252
CNMV REGISTRATION NUMBER: 2451
For more information, see — Online Forex Broker Tadawul FX – About TDFX
and — Regulations compliance for Tadawul FX - CySec license and MiFID compliance
that’s really helpful, thank a lot!
Late to this thread…VERY useful information…thanks for providing
Hi Clint,
Thanks for wrangling the list. You can take Broco Trader in the russia part off the list. I have a couple of friends here in the states who have moved to different brokers after being told to scram by Broco trader. They have massive problems and as such delayed and delayed in giving them their money back. They were told US traders are no longer accepted. I haven’t verified, but i know these guys personally.
Thanks, sandpipper
Broco has been moved to page 3. The list now stands at 46 “yes”, and 46 “no”.
Uh, what kind of a response do you expect from a broker representative? One thing is still very obvious is this; most traders, including self-professed experienced ones have zero clue what “hedging” truly is. They think they know but when you listen to them babble, it is painfully clear that they have absolutely no clue whatsoever. Yet they argue louder and louder and insist that they know what hedging is all about. Sorry, they don’t have a slightest clue.
And you are right… there is nothing liberating when you are essentially handcuffing traders, especially traders who were doing quite well scalping trading opportunities. This is why we need to continually bombard Congress with this NFA/CFTC issue. I don’t think they know what really went down here.
Here’s an excerpt from an item in the “Trendlines” section of the current issue of [I][B]Futures[/B][/I] magazine (page 11 in the print edition):
Regulators face budget battle
[B]The Dodd-Frank Act is law and rules implementing it are being written, but it could be a lame duck[/B] as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are fighting for funding as Congressional Republicans have the agencies’ budgets squarely in their sights.
[B]“Dodd-Frank is not going to be overturned, but [Republicans] will try to defund it to death.[/B] If you look at the budget situation, that’s where we are right now,” says Paul Zubulake, senior analyst at Aite Group.
Now, the agencies are facing multi-million-dollar cuts. [B]In the latest proposal put forward, the CFTC’s budget would be slashed by $56.8 million[/B] — nearly a third of the agency’s current budget — over the next seven months.
[B]The CFTC in particular is being targeted[/B] as it is preparing to begin oversight of the multi-trillion-dollar over-the-counter (OTC) swaps market. CFTC Chairman [B]Gary Gensler told Congress his agency would have to cut personnel from 680 employees to below 440. He also said the CFTC would be unable to police or ensure transparent markets in either futures or swaps.[/B]
Zubulake speculated [B]the CFTC may need to delay implementing much of Dodd-Frank if it doesn’t get the funding it needs.[/B] “I don’t know how implementing something without being able to enforce it makes sense,” he says.
I have bolded several sentences, for emphasis. Here’s a link to the entire [I][B]Futures[/B][/I] article —
Regulators face budget battle - Regulations - Futures Magazine
The [I][B]Futures[/B][/I] article is encouraging. It might even make you think that common sense is finally coming to bear on the excesses of the CFTC. But, don’t be lulled into thinking that this battle is essentially won —
[B]If you believe that the CFTC is guilty of gross over-reaching in its regulation of retail forex, now is the time for you to step up and become an activist.[/B]
Write to your Republican congressmen and senators, and ask them to rein in the out-of-control CFTC.
An actual typewritten letter, mailed via snail-mail, will get more attention than an email. An email will get more attention than a telephone call.
Write a draft of your letter or email; make sure it is concise, focused, polite and respectful; make it as professional and business-like as you can; and proof-read it for careless errors. When it’s ready to go, mail it (or email it) to the correct address.
If you choose email, use these links to contact your Representative in Congress and your Senators —
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml — U.S. Senate: Senators Home
Your letter (or email) can be very general — i.e., the Dodd-Frank legislation was a bad idea and should be de-funded, and the CFTC should be cut down to size.
Or, your letter can get into the details of our issues with the CFTC.
If you decide to get into details —
Limit your comments and requests to forex issues. Leave futures, options and derivatives out of the discussion.
Concentrate on our two biggest issues regarding CFTC over-regulation of retail forex:
(1) CFTC harassment of offshore brokers who want to do business with U.S. clients.
Ask your congressmen and senators to send a clear message to the CFTC to stop wasting taxpayer money pursuing offshore forex brokers with frivolous lawsuits, and
(2) The CFTC’s unnecessary reduction of allowable leverage, seriously harming small traders.
Ask your congressmen and senators to send a clear message to the CFTC to stop strangling small traders engaged in retail forex in the United States.
Hi Clint,
I hope I’m doing this right.
I am interested in Varchev Financial, and I looked at your description. I went to their website crawled around and found the following info;
Platforms: MT4 and mobile MT4.
Leverage: up to 1-500.
Minimum sum to open a margin account: $0.
Spreads: EURO/USD: 2. GBP/JPY 8.
I tried to enter these in your post…Didn’t work…
By the way I also took their registration number, went to the FSA website and queried to find anything negative about the company. Found nothing bad.
Thanks for all the good work you have been doing,
John
Hi, John
You are, indeed, doing everything right.
Thanks for supplying the Varchev info. As you have discovered, you can’t edit someone else’s post; so that leaves me with all the bookkeeping and updating chores on the Offshore Brokers List. I will attend to those chores later today, and add your Varchev info to the List.
By the way, for months I’ve been asking members of this Forum to help out by digging up some of the missing info in the List. You are one of only [B]about two people[/B] who have filled in some of the blanks. Thanks again.
Your post implied that I might have furnished the Varchev info which currently appears in the List. Actually, someone else said that Varchev belongs on the List, and I added them to the List on that person’s say-so. I know nothing about Varchev.
As with any foreign broker, [B]do your due diligence thoroughly.[/B] (But, it sounds like you’re already on top of that chore.)
eglobal/forex4you
If you have some information, please share.
Well Clint, I do have a little bit of information to share. I was talking with my counterpart at InvesorsEurope (IE) about the conflict about accepting US clients. It seems that they are specifically looking to be able to prove how that they are not directly recruiting US clients. If a US client was to tell them that they learned about them through their website, then IE would have to reject the US client, because their website is specifically designed to solicit business. As you know, I create trading assistant robots for the new mathematical trading … we can recommend brokers who’s trading rules we know, and have had some experience with. Therefore, any US investor who goes through our IB is accepted because the traders would not have learned about the broker from the broker. Since this seems to be the main concern, I believe that a US trader could work with almost any broker if they were to sign up through an introducing broker and could show some reason that they prefer to work with this introducing broker, such as a particular type of trading style. The problem with the company from the Virgin Islands and the US IB was that they had an association other than strictly an IB that was referring clients to the best broker for that particular client. So what someone may with to try to do would be to sign up with their particular broker through an introducing broker from outside of the US, that would protect the broker and they may choose to begin accepting US traders who come to them through this fashion.
Interesting theory, but didn’t a number of companies get hit in the first crackdown even though they were using introducing brokers to accept US customers?
I think we unfortunately lost FXCBS as a possible choice because I can’t find United States on their countries list. I’m getting really sick of this - treated like I’m part of a pariah nation because of the moronic actions of my government. I’m afraid that once I open an offshore account and get it funded I’ll soon be turned away.
Have confidence in Tadaulfx, I have been with them for the last three years, excellent broker. They have assured me they have no reason to deny US traders.