micro/cent account is pretty standard to offer for brokers now. It's just the matters of spread and deposit required.
It is not illegal to use a non-regulated broker, but most non-regulated brokers are scammers. I suggest using regulated brokers like CMC, Vantage, FP Markets, or any other suitable choice of broker to avoid being scammed.
It is not illegal, but it is not safe to use a non-regulated broker because they can be scammers. So it is better to trade with brokers that are regulated, like CMC, Global Prime, and FP Markets.
Not illegal. I think people usually get mixed up in thinking that it's safer to use regulated brokers, but most have probably heard about what happened with Veracity Markets just recently and all of the people that had money stuck there. It isn't illegal to use offshore brokers, but people think it's more likely to be scammed. That's where thorough research comes in and of course you need to do business somewhere that's been around for at least a full year so there's feedback out there if you do decide to go that route.
Agreed, you don't have a great deal of recourse with regulated ones anyway. I was just reading about a case where a UK broker (Tickmill) ripped off one of their clients because he had a disagreement with one of their customer service agents. She closed his trades while he was in draw down and all sorts. If you want to take legal action against them you can, but the legal fees and the time it takes you makes it totally not worth it unless you are trading like 100k plus account. As I understand it is not illegal for you to use an offshore provide, but it might be illegal for a company to accept US clients, so just check on the website of which ever ones you look at, or speak to their customer service department and check. Over here in Australia many of us have gone offshore due to the new leverage laws that came in. I was using IC Markets with 1:500 fx leverage (the normal) but they capped the leverage to 1:30 not too long back, which absolutely sucks for us Aussie traders. Using CedarFX now which is a pretty decent offshore option. You only need to trade enough to withdraw your initial deposit anyway after that's it's effectively risk free, goes for any broker.
I think it depends on regulation. Completely unregulated brokers with little to know KYC clearly doesn't want to expand their business and most likely run scam scheme
Traders avoid non registered brokers because they are mostly scammers, and their trading conditions are unreliable. It is better to trade with proper regulated brokers such as CMC or FP Markets.