I have the opportunity to trade with $20,000 of other people’s money (OPM). I am trying to figure out the legalities behind this. Has anyone here started a business trading OPM? Any advice? Thanks.
Forget about it, unless you want to spend the most miserable 12 months of your life.
I trade my own money, as well as a few accounts for others.
It’s a different world having to answer to someone else.
Make sure you can make it for yourself, before you even THINK of trading for someone else.
Let alone a 20k account. That is likely to cause you some heartburn.
LOLLLLLLLLLL!!!
But MT, you’re experienced, I think the OP is starting from the off.
Good Luck trading OPM…especially those who have never seen the forex market moves…
Expect your phone going off the hook especially when u have had made one or two mistakes and lost some dough…
If you want one advice…try to return capital as soon as possible and leave the profits for further trading…that would smooth somethings out.
Otherwise you are asking for trouble.
Happy Pipping.
If you’re just looking for the technical legalities I don’t think you’re going to get a huge amount of information from here. Most people here will only be trading for themselves. You’d be better off talking to a lawyer. Besides there’s probably nation specific laws that you would want to take into account in relation to joint enterprises, taxes, etc. All this is professional advice that’s best received from a professional in this area before you get setup - might save you a lot of headaches and problems down the road.
1 Like
Thanks for the replies. I am definitely looking more for the legalities as opposed to people’s opinions on whether or not it is a good idea. I was just wondering if there was anyone here that has done this themselves. As far as having people call me everyday and stressing out over their money…These are people I know well who are fully aware that they could lose everything and they are okay with that. They have confidence in me and and won’t be the type who call me everyday asking about the progress of their money. I have told them myself that I am not ready to trade their money yet. I want to wait a good while longer before I do that. However I would like to trade with their money in the future and I am just trying to gather as much information as possible as to what that would entail.
1 Like
As a matter of interest, how long have you been trading profitably for?
Here’s the big difference.
If you are taking money from others for the purpose of investment, and opening an account in YOUR name, or a business under YOUR management, you’ll need to account for that with the appropriate licenses.
If the investment is from a single person, if THEY open an account, and your only role is to trade it, you really don’t need anything other than luck, and a signed agreement on the split should there be any profit.
Mingling monies from several different investors in one account, or you taking money from people to invest are where the legalities will be the most stringent.
great profits to ya
I would imagine that could be one hell of a headache, you could do it one of two ways, if you do it on a casual basis for friends and family, the kinds of scenarios I could imagine happening is where someone you do that for gets suspicious that you are not being entirely honest about the profits you made from their money when the return on their investment is not what they expected, or worse ways when you have to tell them you lose all or some of their money etc etc,
If you want to do it in a more professional way, you may then find you need to have some kind of license to be an investments broker of sorts, and be subject to all kinds of buraucracy, regulations and other red tape, I’m no expert on this there are probably others on this forum that know a lot more about it than me but I would imagine there are all kinds of regulations to try and stop unscrupulous people from ripping everyone off (although that doesnt seem to apply to wall street lol).
Then of course you have the taxes to worry about, business taxes as well as income taxes and whatever other taxes their are on returns on investments.
I guess bp is not the very best site to ask for business wisdom regarding founding a Hedge fund - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia in particular. While bp is really a nice site to ask some basic questions regarding retail trading I’d consult a lawyer or any business club for founding a hedge fund.
Trading for others while retail trading is a completely different topic. I’d suggest to stay away from it as far as you can. Major headaches are preprogrammed:
If they lose, you get blamed and maybe serious law actions.
If they win, you are the idiot of the block.
In both cases you invested time and energy, which you probably could invest more wisely in other actions. Not only keeps it off time and energy trading for yourself. Why would you trade for others? If you can make it then trade for yourself, collect some money and invest it wisely. Giving away money or work for free is never a wise decision, because it leads people to think money is for free and it needs no work to get something. Real, lasting value however is created with work, may it be by thinking or/and working by hand.
I am not clear about OPM but I can do trade if anybody wish to continue.
lets say you lose, whats than?
up to my knowledge its legal in most countries try to search for brokers who offer externally managed accounts service
and read about it.
but as long as you dont know about this you may be not yet qualified for this kind of bushiness, so try to slow down a little. and try to demo your skills for a few month, if you find your self getting constant gain, then its your decision to go for mini account for another few month, or to go with a big amount. either ways dont ever try to risk more than 1% of your account at any given time (risk here means the amount of money that you may lose if your stop-loss get hit).
my advice to everyone who is new to this is to open a thread here and place some of his/her trades life. with its stop-loss and profit-take points. so you can check you performance in public that would help you to increase your self trust and will give you a chance to read other traders comments and advices.
best wishes.
If the responses here havent already deterred you ,Some good advice would be to take their money (initial deposit) and grow it eg. if it was 20000$ then once you reach 40000$ then withdraw their initial deposits and tell them you will be trading using their profits this will save you from a lot of trouble and i am sure they will be less angry if you lose the profits since their initial money was sent back to them .