Caveman Forex Challenge: Week One Week one of the Caveman Forex Challenge is in the books. Our friendly neighborhood Neanderthals gave out 12 free trades last Wednesday. It was not one of Cavemanâs better weeks according to their own grid which shows them losing -5 pips overall on all their trades. However, due to risk/reward ratios and a slightly different price feed that resulted in the Savior making money on a trade the Cavemen lost on we made a $348.39 profit overall in our demo account as four trades went in our direction and four trades went in the other direction. Tonight a new batch of trades will be published. You can find them here if you wish to play along: http://www.cavemanforex.com/WednesdaysFreeForexPicks.html CFTC Update: I have not heard anything yet about the new forex dealer rules. However, CFTC should be releasing their net capital report this week. Stay Tuned.
Correction: Varengold and Finex Last year Finex was investigated by the SFBC in Switzerland, however, they were not closed for fraud as was indicated in a post titled âThe Dead Pool Graveyard.â It appears that Finex was bought out by Varengold FX thus bringing the investigation to a close. Details of the merger can be found here: http://download.varengold.com/varengold.de/download/VG-Finex_Press_Release-us_customer.pdf The Savior regrets the error.
LOL, "bought out" is a loose term here, don't you agree? IOW, same company / gig / scam as FINEX and TradexFX before. I think they now refer to themselves as "Boston Trading and Research" or something like that.
agreed. finex was dodgy no matter how you slice it but in fairness to them at least they closed up shop in an honorable fashion.
CFTC Net Capital Report Update The new net capital numbers are out. These numbers are more important than ever due to the new law requiring all forex dealers have $10 million in adjusted net capital by the end of September and $20 million by May 2009. Here is the link to access the report: http://www.cftc.gov/stellent/groups/public/@financialdataforfcms/documents/file/fcmdata0408.pdf The following firms have net capital below $10 million Advanced Markets $5,041,000 Bacera $5,370,000 MG Financial $5,886,000 CMC $7,089,000 Forex Club $7,562,000 Easy Forex $7,741,000 Hotspot $7,783,000 Friedberg Mercantile $8,053,000 MB Trading $8,381,000 Ikon $9,418,000 In particular you will notice that three firms are far below the upcoming increase to $10 million. Advanced Markets, Bacera and Money Garden. In fact, they are struggling just to meet the current $5 million net capital requirement with Advanced Markets a scant $41,000 above the current law! That kind of capitalization does not inspire much confidence and traders really need to beware doing business with them. The following firms have net capital below $20 million GFS Forex $11,376,000 Alpari $11, 766,000 IFX $12,362,000 ODL $12,995,000 CMS Forex $14,085,000 I Trade FX $16,054,000 FX Solutions $17,628,000 PFG $19,369,000 The following firms have net capital above $20 million Interbank FX $21,367,000 GFT Forex $64,288,000 Gain Capital $66,314,000 FXCM $73,603,000 Rosenthal Collins $76,571,000 Oanda $163,136,000 As always conduct your due diligence and make sure the firm you are trading with will be able to comply with the new law.
The Gray School of Irish Dance The receiver for FXLQ released their latest report to the court and it is chock full of eye popping revelations. http://www.robbevans.com/pdf/forexlqreport02.pdf Revelation Number One: the Estate is short two million dollars. Revelation Number Two: the receiver was able to further confirm that FXLQ had used a fake bond to prop up their adjusted net capital. Revelation Number Three: FXLQ had been violating their adjusted net capital requirement as early as October of 2006. Revelation Number Four: FXLQ paid over a quarter million dollars out to the Gray School of Irish Dance. WTF? Talk about getting your priorities screwed up. Here is a company that continually cannot meet its adjusted net capital requirement sending out huge chunks of change to what appears to be a dance school in CT? http://www.grayschool.com/welcome.htm Hey I love Riverdance as much as the next Irishman but youâd think you would make sure your books are in order before cutting cheques to the tippy toe jumping set. The good news for customers is that the receiver is recommending customers being fully reimbursed before other creditors. This apparently includes Interbank FX who is owed a whopping $10 million. Judging from IBFXâs plummeting net capital (almost below $20 million) they sure could use the dough. Expect the FXLQ saga to last through the summer as the receiver continues to dig through mounds and mounds of paperwork, unexplained expenses and dodgy offshore bank accountsâ¦
Tradeview Throws in the Towel No Mas! No Mas! Like a bloody and battered Roberto Duran the folks over at Rosenthal Collins are giving up on MT4. This weekend they dropped a bombshell on their clients: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=92624 Anyone who spends time on the bulletin boards has gotten to know Tradeview Forex as they have spent gobs of money advertising their wares. Yet it appears they were never able to get MT4 to work proficiently and as such are simply walking away for the whole failed experiment. One Tradeview customer on the forex factory thread referenced above states: While Tradeview should be commended for knowing when to call it quits I must take issue with this notion that Ikon has a "distinguished regulatory history." Last fall Ikon merged with Royal Forex Trading, which had a poor regulatory record and was sanctioned by the NFA right before they gave up their FCM license due to the fact they did not have the necessary capital to stay in business. Second, both of Ikon's principals were former principals of Coes FX. Right after they left Coes FX became the subject of numerous regulatory actions by both the NFA and CFTC resulting in a quarter million dollar fraud settlement and the closure of the firm. http://www.cftc.gov/newsroom/enforcementpressreleases/2006/pr5215-06.html Third, sources have informed me that many of the clients that Ikon will be receiving from Tradeview were formerly the clients of One World Capital. One World was the poster child for undercapitalization and blew up last year just as the $5 million capital requirement was kicking in. In short, Ikon seems to stick its fingers in an awful lot of cookie jars and it they aren't careful they may get their pudgy little digits stuck in one soon. Finally, they are $10 million below the $20 million capital requirement set to kick in next spring. So to those MT4 traders out there who chose Tradeview Forex because they were well capitalized I say buyer beware. Ikon is not Rosenthal Collins. It may be time for you to shop around again...
Easy Forex Exposed Or so this website claims: www.easy-forex-warning.com Youâll remember earlier this year the Savior wrote up a story on Easy Forex after an Israeli news broadcaster ran an expose on them: http://www.forexfactory.com/showpost.php?p=1723203&postcount=525 In that story informants claimed that as introducing agents they only made money if their clients lost money. Well, in this soon to be published book from the gang at easy-forex-warning they claim this is how introducing agents are compensated: Itâs called the âNet Deposit Methodâ and I must say this is all new to me. If it is true it is downright sinister. In fact, one agent provides testimony at the website in which he describes how angry an agent would get if their customer actually started making money: http://www.easy-forex-warning.com/_mgxroot/page_10755.html All of these testimonials apparently are related to Easy Forexâs Israeli operation. But is this kind of stuff going on in America too? Easy Forex is registered with the NFA and to date they do not have any infractions on file with U.S. regulators. But then again the more and more checking I do on these companies the more apparent it is becoming to me that the NFA has only skimmed the surface of retail forex (the fact that Robert Grayâs fake $50 million bond went unnoticed for months by regulators is still flabbergasting to me.) In any case Easy Forex deserves particular scrutiny from the trading public over their alleged market making activities. Traders should seriously consider trading only with Dealers that are not in the market making business. The evidence against them is really starting to pile up.
Cleaning up with the Cavemen I have been pressed for time and thus the Caveman Challenge has floundered as a result. But the cavemen are coming off three straight winning weeks. The Savior misunderestimated the knuckles dragging, club wielding, forex tabulating Australopithecines churning out signals over at cavemanforex.com While only a fool would judge a signal provider favorably after checking out only a handful of trades amongst hundreds I will admit these cavemen have proved they are far superior to the monkeys who worshipped that stone slab in the opening scene from a Space Odyssey 2000. So the Savior retracts his dis-endorsement of cavemanforex. Judge them by their numbers, not their body hair and sloped foreheadsâ¦
ACM Comes Out of the Dark⦠⦠and into the light. For years ACM has operated on the fringes of the legitimate forex dealer world but they have now seen the light. ACM is the newest registered forex dealer to become a member of the NFA. http://www.nfa.futures.org/basicnet/Details.aspx?entityid=0388715 This move coincides with ACMâs move to get a banking license in Switzerland. Looking forward to seeing that first net capital number boysâ¦