The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) – the body unifying all regional financial markets and services regulators – has announced the implementation of Multilateral Instrument 91-102 Prohibition of Binary Options. This makes it illegal to advertise, offer, sell or otherwise trade binary options shorter than 30 days with any individual residing in Canada.
Good! The vigorish charged by these bookies (err.. binary options firms) makes this an unbeatable game. These firms are running a con game with slick marketing and they lead the naive to believe they can become pro traders betting (err.. trading) with them. Maybe try looking at it this way: Are there any professional traders trading with these firms?
There are professional traders trading binary options with expirations of less than 30 days. There are entire exotic options desks at all the big investment banks that do nothing but this. And that's what they're banning, just to be specific, not bucket shops. They intended to ban bucket shops, but actually banned a much broader class of activity that included bucket shops.
The Nova Scotia Securities Commission has issued a warning that the binary options broker AshfordInvestments is not authorized to sell securities in the Canadian province. According to the regulator, however, at least one Nova Scotia investor has lost money with this company. He was intending to do business with Quantum Code and his credit card was charged by Ashford Investments. Both Quantum Code and Ashford Investments are companies soliciting the sale of binary options to Nova Scotians, and neither are registered to sell securities in Nova Scotia