You are correct - my apologies.
Under FCA regulations, a winning trade generally does not increase margin requirements. Instead, it can decrease them as your account equity rises, potentially allowing for more leverage. Margin requirements are typically determined by the overall risk of your portfolio and the instruments you are trading.
P.S this was Google, so I have not checked with IG. ‘generally’ perhaps does not apply to IG
Perhaps they do not consider is as equity in your account until trade closed?
Not at all, interesting conversation anyway, Johnny, thank you.
I’ve looked at IG but never tried them. You like them, I’m assuming?
For someone wanting more than 1:30 leverage, of course, the FCA regulations would be a pain, and spread-betting needs quite a lot of margin. I’m only a low-position-size trader anyway, but I like to add to winners. Just never to losers!
Glad you are wise not to add to losers!
Call me ‘old fashioned’ - I’ve been around the block a few times. I just love the IG platform.
A know it’s a well proven sin not to add to winners (big fan of Tom Hougaard) but I usually just go in full clip 1- 2%
Coming from a horseracing background, I’ve always considered a bet as a bet - win or lose. And I have seen so many guys come unstuck laying rediculous odds like 1000/1 in running on Betfair - a horse can be 20 lenghths infront and fall at the last or run out of steam in the last 50yds…
Anyway I hate regulations - look at the damage the self appointed quasi quango ‘Gambling Commission’ has done to horse racing, forcing illegal betting with dodgy off-shore bookmakers.
Always hated regulations - since I was considered a ‘naughty boy’ at school. 
It has analogies in many areas of everyday life, too: if you just “disallow stuff”, the outcome is all too often that you make people do things in worse places that are more dangerous, where you have less or no control, which hinders the people you (ought to) want to help.
Yes - when they stopped prescribing heroin in early 70s the blackmarket was flooded.
You can still vary it between 1:1 and 1:30 as a retail trader.
For most people that’s plenty.
If you want more you need to move into the realm of professional trading.
Which in all honesty isn’t terribly difficult when you check the requirements.
I mean people spend a lot of money on trading signals and courses from guys with rented Lamborghinis in Dubai.
Yet you can get a proper CISI qualification from the LSE for only a few hundred pounds and actually be on the path to becoming a professional.
Thank you - but it’s a bit late in the day for me to be going back to school - I’m 77
If you want high leverage - I would trust TD365 200:1 Tom Hougaard uses them and he adds to winning trades like crazy with very high stakes. Accounts are held in clients names at Barclay’s Bank London.
But thanks for the thought 
Please excuse me for asking, @Johnny1974 , but how do you know?
Do you actually have something from Barclays showing your name? An email, perhaps? A link to something online? Some acknowledgement that you exist and they hold your funds?
Or do you just take the word of an unregulated broker for it?
You can perhaps see that for those of us considering using the broker, this is naturally a pretty big and important question?
Tom Hougaard has 200:1 leverage, but I’ve never seen him get close to using it. My account is 30:1 and it’s very rare that I couldn’t copy exactly what he does with the same amount of money.
The average banks leverage in 2008 that was part of the giant crash was about 30:1. At 30:1 a 3% move in an assets value basically kills you.
That’s certainly interesting, but doesn’t it make you wonder, in that case, why he’s so actively and repeatedly promoting an unregulated broker?
Or am I being “too suspicious” in wondering about things like that? I just don’t know … … …
He is involved with them in some capacity. It’s a web based system with his own plugins that they make for him and you can use them too. He probably gets some IB type bonus for people that sign up and use his plugins because they 100% are there because they’ve seen him and are familiar with how it looks.
I don’t doubt TD365 are legitimate, nor do I doubt IC Markets putting you in the Barbados regulated company are legitimate. The cost to a broker of being regulated by ASIC, FCA and the rest is huge. I have some recollection that it doesn’t even matter if the broker is ASIC regulated because they only apply to Australian customers, but that may well be wrong.
Just because a broker isn’t strongly regulated doesn’t mean they’re going to scam you, the ones with good reputations are good. But newbies don’t know what is a legitimate good reputation and what is advertising scams and get caught. In which case choosing an FCA regulated broker will be the best protection you can get.
Tom Hougaard is 100% legitimate and very talented. I’ve had him on youtube whilst I trade and even when he gets direction wrong and I get it right, he often ends up with a better result than me by the end of the session. He streams completely live and you can literally watch your chart do what his does. He is the only youtuber I know of that does this.
In a funny kind of way, that’s what potentially concerns me, to be honest. More about the broker than about Tom Hougaard, admittedly.
People tell me that they heavily and persistently promote his Youtube channel to their customers, too.
I understand that that doesn’t in itself mean that there’s anything wrong with either of them, at all. But it does make the whole thing come across as “incentivized promotion,” doesn’t it? And in the field of forex trading, I think nobody can blame anyone for feeling cautious in principle when things look that way?
No, I’m sure that’s right. But if you’re not confident about them to start with, you can understand people wanting to use an account that’s regulated by an independent body with a demonstrable record of being both able and willing to take the customer’s side when there’s a dispute?
And one only has to look in trading forums to see that there are actually plenty of disputes?
I don’t think I’m questioning that, really.
But I’d also like to see someone replying to the question that @Otto_Gumbelsteiner asked above.
It’s a very legitimate and reasonable question, isn’t it? If the broker is telling customers that client funds are held in the customer’s name at Barclays in London, there must, surely, be some verifiable evidence of that available?
100%, I was trying to say that. Also, TD365 does have an FCA regulated company, but the other one is for people who want the extra leverage.
I’d say that 90% of the disputes I’ve seen are unfounded. There have definitely been a few I’ve seen where people got scammed. But most are people who did something stupid, don’t understand how trading works and/or bitter that they lost a load of money.
Good question, I have no idea. The FCA company says they hold funds there, so surely that’s true. I don’t know how to go beyond that. As far as the FCA regulated company goes, I’d switch there in a heartbeat if they offered cTrader as a platform. The fixed spread is very tempting
Thanks, John.
Yes, absolutely. The FCA regularly and reliably checks the truth of statements made on the websites of the companies they regulate. They can’t possibly be lying about that.
But @johnny1974 is telling us that their unregulated, offshore company offering 1:200 leverage is holding deposited funds in the client’s name at Barclays Bank. I’m not suggesting he’s wrong. Just (with others!) asking how he knows this to be so.
If he’s taking the broker’s word for it, that’s fine, too, of course. It’s his money!
It’s just not what I’d choose to do, myself, in the (slightly suspicious-looking?) circumstances.
Here is the reply I got from TD365
|### TD365.com Bahamas|Thu 10 Apr, 16:08||
|
| — | — | — |
|to me
|
Hi John,
Thank you for your message, and first and foremost, we wish you a full and smooth recovery. We also want to express our gratitude for your longstanding support and advocacy of TD365, especially within the BabyPips community.
We understand the importance of transparency when it comes to the security of client funds and want to ensure you’re fully equipped to address any doubts raised in the forum.
At TD365, we take client fund protection extremely seriously. All client funds are held in segregated accounts at Barclays Bank in London. These accounts are completely separate from the company’s operational accounts and are maintained in accordance with our client money policy. This structure ensures that funds remain the property of our clients at all times and are not used for any business or company obligations.
You can read our full Client Money Policy here for complete details:
https://td365.com/en-gb/client-money-policy-2/
This document outlines how funds are managed, how daily reconciliations are carried out, and the safeguards we have in place to ensure client money is protected at all times.
We appreciate your continued support and commitment to accuracy within the trading community. If you need any additional clarification or further assistance in addressing concerns on BabyPips, we’re more than happy to help.
Kind regards,
Not wishing to be rude - but I have had enough and couldn’t careless which broker anyone chooses or what they think of Tom Hougaard for that matter!
Lol, that’s also fair enough!
In any case, thank you very much for following that up and publishing their reply here, @Johnny1974 . This was really kind of you! 
That’s right. This was very good of you, Johnny. And appreciated - thanks very much.
As the person asking the skeptical question, I think that’s a good reply from the broker, too. I am sorry to have troubled you but glad I asked, if you see what I mean.
(I don’t know what the “full and smooth recovery” part refers to, of course, but I share that wish, whatever it is!).
Would you agree that there’s a difference between “traders whose methods depend on high leverage” and “traders who use high leverage”?
Nobody could really question that, simply as a factual statement, but I think it also - unfortunately - implies that everyone choosing to use high leverage doesn’t know what they’re doing, and I don’t think it’s really quite as simple as that, is it?
I’m not doubting that very many beginners unwisely use leverage that’s far too high for their experience-level, and that many end up inadvertently using unregulated brokers because of their desire to use higher leverage than they ought to. But wouldn’t you agree that (aside from the regulation issue, which is undeniably significant in a forex-trading context), it isn’t the leverage itself that’s dangerous: it’s more the dangerous ways that inexperienced traders are likely to use it?
That’s certainly so, but they’re almost never trading CFDs, are they?