Forced liquidation of all PFGBest's customers positions. "Customers of embattled futures and currency brokerage PFGBest saw trades held with the firm liquidated Tuesday, according to people familiar with the matter. All open trading positions held by clients of PFGBest were to be liquidated by Jefferies Group, which clears transactions for the struggling company, customers were told in a notice early Tuesday, a copy of which was reviewed by Dow Jones." http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2012/07/10/pfgbest-customers-trades-liquidated-tuesday/ Anyone want to tell us that "not a penny was lost" on these forced liquidations?
probably thats why indices went down so sharply today. And ofcourse, forced liquidation at whatever prices does always cause losses!
I have no idea. But IBKR for one has a dismal looking chart, which has me a bit concerned. Actually none of the retail brokerages look all that great. If anyone has any specific info on IBKR which might be enlightening, please feel free to share.
John Q. Public's head hits the pillow on Monday night secure that he has X dollars on deposit with a futures broker and what's more, if he is willing to pay say a $25 wire fee, he can access those funds same day if he makes his decision in the AM. On Tuesday he does not have access to X dollars, nor 50% of X dollars nor even a penny. While he can do closing transactions in his account he cannot hedge any position without tying up margin -- which he may or may not have -- at another firm. He has no real sense of whether he will get X back, or 80% of X or 40% of X. It is possible, although unlikely, that it could be under 20% of X. I could go on for hours but you are already getting the drift. To say his money is not lost is totally inaccurate. In fact that is the perfect description for those funds. That is not to say some or all of those funds may not be found in a day, a week or a year; they may but then again on this hypothetical Tuesday even if they are to be found later no one knows what portion will be found or, in fact, if any meaningful amount will be found. When you are looking for your money the reason you are looking for it is that it is lost just like the glasses I left in the cab last week. The cab driver was smart enough to return to my house and ring my bell and pocket a $20 tip but to say that those glasses weren't lost ... would be absurd. They were lost, they were then found and subsequently returned. In this instance my bet is that what they will find (of those funds that are lost) will be less than what the poor son-of-a-bitch -- John -- had when his head hit the pillow on Monday night!!!
OK, so we're backtracking a bit. AFAIK there has never been a US client of an FCM that has lost a dollar of principal. Of course this excludes MFG and Peregrine. I would assume that there will be substantial losses of principal with both.