The European Union has published new regulations applying to retail Forex, CFD, and the few remaining binary options brokerages in its territory. If you have an account with one such brokerage, the regulations will affect you when they come into force during the late spring and summer. This article will outline how the new regulations will impact your bottom line.
Details of the New ESMA Regulations
In March 2018, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the financial regulator and supervisor of the European Union, announced new regulations concerning the provision of contracts for differences (CFDs) and binary options to retail investors. It is unclear exactly when the regulations will come into force, but some time in May or June 2018 looks to be the most likely date, and Forex and CFD brokerages located within the European Union (including the United Kingdom, for the time being) will be forced to comply. The regulations will need to be renewed by ESMA every three months to remain in force over the long term.
The regulation concerning binary options is very simple: they may not be sold. In simple terms, this is the end of binary options as a product sold from within the European Union.
The regulations concerning CFDs are more complex but still relatively straightforward. Firstly, there is some confusion as to what exactly is a CFD, with many traders thinking that spot Forex is not considered a CFD and will therefore be exempt from the new regulations. They are wrong: spot Forex is technically defined as a CFD. In fact, every asset you see available for trading at Forex / CFD brokers will most likely be subject to the new regulations.
The new regulations will implement the following changes for retail client accounts (more on who is a retail client; later).
-
The maximum leverage which can be offered will be 30 to 1. That will apply to major currency pairs such as EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY, etc.
-
Other currency pairs, major equity indices, and gold will be subject to a maximum leverage of 20 to 1.
-
Individual equities cannot be offered with leverage greater than 5 to 1.
-
Cryptocurrencies are subject to a maximum leverage of 2 to 1.
-
Brokers will be required to provide negative balance protection, meaning it will be impossible to lose more money than you deposit.
-
Brokers will be required to close a clients open positions when the account equity reaches 50% of the required minimum margin by all open positions. This ;margin call; provision can be tricky to understand, so will be explained in more detail later.
-
Bonuses or any other form of trading incentives may not be offered.
-
Brokers will be required to display a standardized risk warning which will include the percentage of their clients who lose money over a defined period.
Understanding the ;Margin Call; Regulation
The best way to understand the 50% margin call provision is to use an example. Imagine a client opens an account with a Forex broker, depositing ;100 in total. The client opens a short trade in EUR/USD, by going short one mini-lot (one tenth of a full lot). One full lot of EUR/USD is worth ;10,000, meaning one mini-lot is worth ;1,000. To find out the minimum margin required to support that trade, we divide the size of the trade (;1,000) by 30, which comes to ;33.33. This is the minimum required margin to maintain the trade. Half of that amount is ;16.67. Now assume the trade goes against the client, with the price of EUR/USD rising above the entry price. As soon as the price rises far enough to produce a floating loss of ;83.33 (;100 - ;16.67), the broker must close the trade out, even if the trade has no stop loss or has not yet reached the stop loss. In theory, this means that a client;s account can never reach zero. Examples involving multiple open trades will be more complex, but will operate according to the same principles.
What Will This Mean for Traders?
The regulations will only apply to ;retail clients;, so you might try to apply to be classed as a professional trader. To get a broker to classify you as anything other than a retail client, you will have to show you have financial qualifications, a large amount of liquid assets, plenty of experience trading, and usually that you also trade frequently. Most traders will be unable to qualify, although it is worth noting that one London-based brokerage, IG Group, has stated that their proportion of clients now classified as recently increased from 5% to 15% of their total customers.
The major impact these regulations will have on traders is simple ndash; the maximum trade size they can possibly make at brokers regulated in the European Union will shrink. Many will say that the maximum leverage limits still offer far more than any trader could need, and I agree. I am wary of leverage and I hate to see anyone using leverage greater than 3 to 1 for Forex under any conditions, or any leverage at all for stocks and cryptocurrencies. Commodities can also fluctuate wildly in value. Too many people forget that the biggest danger in leverage is not overly large position sizing, it is that a ldquo;black swan rdquo; event such as the CHF flash crash of 2015 could happen and wipe out your account through huge price slippage. However, there is another factor that is widely forgotten: why assume that a trader rsquo;s account at one Forex broker is all the money they have in the world? For example, a trader might have $10,000 in the bank. If they deposit $1,000 at a broker offering maximum leverage of 300 to 1, they can trade up to $300,000. At a leverage limit of 30 to 1, that trader will have to deposit their entire $10,000 fund to trade at the same size. In a real sense, that trader might now have to take on more risk to operate in the same way, because if the broker goes bust, while beforehand they might lose $1,000 now they could lose $10,000! Even without negative balance protection, that broker would still have to come after them to try to get an extra $9,000 which they theoretically risk. Yet we saw after the CHF crash that brokers don rsquo;t come after every single client whose losses exceeded their deposit, due to legal costs and reputational issues. This shows that although the stated purpose of the regulation is to protect traders from excessive losses, the story is not as simple as you may think.
Beyond having to deposit more margin, and automatic margin calls, the other major change for traders will be that they will enjoy negative balance protection. This is a positive development which hopefully will make brokerages focus more heavily on the risks they are taking with their business model in the market. At the same time, a possible side effect of the new regulation is the potential increase in average deposits, leading to brokerages being more stable and better capitalized with client funds. Two final notes: brokerages will have to report on their websites the percentages of clients who are losing and making money, although the period over which the statistics must refer to is currently not clear. This will help to shed light on the debate over what percentage of retail traders are profitable, although some brokerages have already released what they claim to be accurate statistics showing that clients with larger account sizes tend to perform better as traders. Additionally, bonuses and promotions will be banned. I welcome this, as not only do they trivialize the serious business of trading, they are almost always a trick offering the illusion of free money whilst preventing traders from withdrawing any profits until a large number of trades are made (read the fine print the next time you squo;).
What If Yoursquo;re Not Happy Remaining in the EU?
Traders with accounts at affected brokers who cannot obtain professional status classification and feel they really need higher leverage than the ESMA limits outlined above might look for a solution by opening accounts with brokers outside the European Union. The most obvious destination would be Australia or New Zealand, where it will still be possible to find reasonably well-regulated Forex brokerages offering leverage in the range of 400 to 1. A recent development that is not talked about much is the growing difficulty of transferring funds to and from Forex brokerages in less tightly regulated jurisdictions. You might decide to open an account with a brokerage in Vanuatu, but you may find that a bank within the European Union might just refuse to send your money there for a deposit. This means that going far offshore, depending upon where you live, may not be a feasible option. In any case, the new regule impossible to live with, and overall there is a compelling case that they are a net benefit to any trader, so why migrate?
SNB Crisis: Retrospective & Impact | Trading Forex
One year ago the Forex world was rocked by the terrible SNB crisis when on January 15, 2015 the Swiss National Bank suddenly announced it was abandoning its currency’s peg to the Euro. The Swiss franc very quickly rose by almost 30% in value against most major currencies and for a period lasting about 45 minutes there was practically no liquidity in the currency, making it impossible to exit trades or indeed for most brokers to square their exposures. Stops were not honored, so all traders short CHF with leverage of more than about 3:1, which is quite low in Forex terms, had their accounts wiped out. Several brokers lost millions, with the most notable victim being FXCM, one of the largest and most reputable Forex brokers in the world. FXCM were seen as at risk of bankruptcy, which they avoided by taking several measures including a $300 million loan from Leucadia.
This SNB crisis is now regarded as the wildest and most dangerous incident in the modern Forex era. For a major global reserve currency such as the Swiss Franc to move in value by more than 25% in minutes during a period with practically no liquidity even from major banks was practically unthinkable. The nearest precedent is probably “Black Wednesday”: the day the British Pound was forced out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992 by George Soros’ Fund winning battle with the Bank of England over its peg to the German Deutschmark. However that was so long ago and occurred well before Forex became a retail market served by a plethora of retail Forex brokerages.
As its now been one year since this SNB crisis, we ask how this event has changed the behavior of Forex traders and Forex brokers.
Effect of SNB Crisis on Forex Traders
Most Forex traders were not personally hurt by the SNB crisis. However those that were long CHF in line with the prevailing long-term trend at the time were hit hard, with any leveraged by at least 4 to 1 wiped out completely. Some traders leveraged by greater amounts found themselves with negative balances, owing their brokers five or even six figure sums far well in excess of their deposits, if they had been generous with the amount of true leverage they were allowing themselves.Of course, there were also traders that were short of the Swiss Franc, and found themselves with massive profits on the day of the SNB crisis, although they may have found that where take profit orders had already been given on the trade, the positive slippage they got from their brokers wasn’t as good as the negative slippage charged to the losing traders on the same trade by the same brokers!
Most traders were neither positively nor negatively personally affected, but most traders did take note and were influenced by the event in several ways.
1. There is more demand now for brokers explicitly offering negative balance protection, i.e. depositors are guaranteed they cannot lose more than they deposit whatever happens.
2. There is a greater awareness of the risk of trading currencies that are the object of a stated peg to another currency by its central bank, as the CHF was pegged to the Euro by the SNB.
3. Forex in general is seen as more risky, as compared to stocks and commodities major Forex rates generally fluctuate by significantly smaller amounts.
4. There is less trust in the SNB in the aftermath of the SNB crisis as just a few days before abandoning the peg they publicly stated they had no intention of doing so.
5. There is less trust in Forex brokers although it is also understood that most Forex brokers were quite blameless as it was actually their liquidity providers that pulled liquidity in most cases, and not the brokers themselves.
6. There is more fear of leverage, or at least a greater awareness of what using even moderately high leverage can do to a trading account when a sudden and unusually strong market event occurs.
Let’s now turn to how Forex brokers have been affected by the SNB crisis. It will be obvious that most of the effects on Forex brokers are just the other side of the impact on traders already listed previously.
Effect of SNB Crisis on Forex Brokers
It was assumed within minutes of the SNB crisis hitting that there was going to be financial chaos in the brokerage arena, which would result in a sizeable number of Forex brokerages being forced into bankruptcy or takeover. In fact, these predictions were wide of the mark, with only a few brokers ultimately being forced under. However FXCM’s share price dropped to under $1 as it became apparent that they required a huge loan with tough terms, although it now seems as though they have been able to weather the storm successfully.One of the biggest ironies of the SNB crisis is that the “true” brokers with models based more upon passing on the best prices and less upon making a market were the brokers that were most exposed to losses. A result of this has been a somewhat greater popularity in market making, and we can see that FXCM is now offering a new “dealing desk” account type.
Traffic has gone two ways on the issue of offering customers negative balance protection. Several brokers that previously offered it have removed it from their terms and conditions (notably FXCM). However there are a few brokers that previously offered who decided to continue with it and are using it as marketing point to assuage traders of their worst fears. Of course, many brokers found themselves owed large negative balances by thousands of retail clients after the SNB crisis, and this debt was not much good on paper as the costs of pursuing the debts would probably have been greater than the total amount recouped. The savvier Forex traders became aware of this, calling the bluffs of Forex brokers that were writing to the owners of negative balances offering 50% off the bill for immediate settlement.
The issue of leverage gained a lot of traction, as the large negative balances that some retail traders found themselves owing came to be seen – justifiably in the case of very inexperienced traders offered huge amounts of leverage – as a result of leverage. Therefore there was a lot of talk about regulators placing severe restrictions on leverage that would effectively strangle the industry in the aftermath of the SNB crisis. This has not happened, but many brokerages have now reduced their maximum leverage offered, if not across the board than at least on more volatile and risky currencies.
Some pundits looked at these kinds of issues, saw the attention that was coming from regulators, and concluded that the model of retail Forex brokerage was going to become significantly more difficult, which would lead to a winnowing out across the industry. These fears now seem to have been unfounded, as the amount of money that remains to be made from retail Forex traders looks to be enough to warrant and hopefully offset all these risks.
Source
SNB Crisis: Retrospective & Impact | Trading Forex
One year ago the Forex world was rocked by the terrible SNB crisis when on January 15, 2015 the Swiss National Bank suddenly announced it was abandoning its currency’s peg to the Euro. The Swiss franc very quickly rose by almost 30% in value against most major currencies and for a period lasting about 45 minutes there was practically no liquidity in the currency, making it impossible to exit trades or indeed for most brokers to square their exposures. Stops were not honored, so all traders short CHF with leverage of more than about 3:1, which is quite low in Forex terms, had their accounts wiped out. Several brokers lost millions, with the most notable victim being FXCM, one of the largest and most reputable Forex brokers in the world. FXCM were seen as at risk of bankruptcy, which they avoided by taking several measures including a $300 million loan from Leucadia.
This SNB crisis is now regarded as the wildest and most dangerous incident in the modern Forex era. For a major global reserve currency such as the Swiss Franc to move in value by more than 25% in minutes during a period with practically no liquidity even from major banks was practically unthinkable. The nearest precedent is probably “Black Wednesday”: the day the British Pound was forced out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992 by George Soros’ Fund winning battle with the Bank of England over its peg to the German Deutschmark. However that was so long ago and occurred well before Forex became a retail market served by a plethora of retail Forex brokerages.
As its now been one year since this SNB crisis, we ask how this event has changed the behavior of Forex traders and Forex brokers.
Effect of SNB Crisis on Forex Traders
Most Forex traders were not personally hurt by the SNB crisis. However those that were long CHF in line with the prevailing long-term trend at the time were hit hard, with any leveraged by at least 4 to 1 wiped out completely. Some traders leveraged by greater amounts found themselves with negative balances, owing their brokers five or even six figure sums far well in excess of their deposits, if they had been generous with the amount of true leverage they were allowing themselves.Of course, there were also traders that were short of the Swiss Franc, and found themselves with massive profits on the day of the SNB crisis, although they may have found that where take profit orders had already been given on the trade, the positive slippage they got from their brokers wasn’t as good as the negative slippage charged to the losing traders on the same trade by the same brokers!
Most traders were neither positively nor negatively personally affected, but most traders did take note and were influenced by the event in several ways.
1. There is more demand now for brokers explicitly offering negative balance protection, i.e. depositors are guaranteed they cannot lose more than they deposit whatever happens.
2. There is a greater awareness of the risk of trading currencies that are the object of a stated peg to another currency by its central bank, as the CHF was pegged to the Euro by the SNB.
3. Forex in general is seen as more risky, as compared to stocks and commodities major Forex rates generally fluctuate by significantly smaller amounts.
4. There is less trust in the SNB in the aftermath of the SNB crisis as just a few days before abandoning the peg they publicly stated they had no intention of doing so.
5. There is less trust in Forex brokers although it is also understood that most Forex brokers were quite blameless as it was actually their liquidity providers that pulled liquidity in most cases, and not the brokers themselves.
6. There is more fear of leverage, or at least a greater awareness of what using even moderately high leverage can do to a trading account when a sudden and unusually strong market event occurs.
Let’s now turn to how Forex brokers have been affected by the SNB crisis. It will be obvious that most of the effects on Forex brokers are just the other side of the impact on traders already listed previously.
Effect of SNB Crisis on Forex Brokers
It was assumed within minutes of the SNB crisis hitting that there was going to be financial chaos in the brokerage arena, which would result in a sizeable number of Forex brokerages being forced into bankruptcy or takeover. In fact, these predictions were wide of the mark, with only a few brokers ultimately being forced under. However FXCM’s share price dropped to under $1 as it became apparent that they required a huge loan with tough terms, although it now seems as though they have been able to weather the storm successfully.One of the biggest ironies of the SNB crisis is that the “true” brokers with models based more upon passing on the best prices and less upon making a market were the brokers that were most exposed to losses. A result of this has been a somewhat greater popularity in market making, and we can see that FXCM is now offering a new “dealing desk” account type.
Traffic has gone two ways on the issue of offering customers negative balance protection. Several brokers that previously offered it have removed it from their terms and conditions (notably FXCM). However there are a few brokers that previously offered who decided to continue with it and are using it as marketing point to assuage traders of their worst fears. Of course, many brokers found themselves owed large negative balances by thousands of retail clients after the SNB crisis, and this debt was not much good on paper as the costs of pursuing the debts would probably have been greater than the total amount recouped. The savvier Forex traders became aware of this, calling the bluffs of Forex brokers that were writing to the owners of negative balances offering 50% off the bill for immediate settlement.
The issue of leverage gained a lot of traction, as the large negative balances that some retail traders found themselves owing came to be seen – justifiably in the case of very inexperienced traders offered huge amounts of leverage – as a result of leverage. Therefore there was a lot of talk about regulators placing severe restrictions on leverage that would effectively strangle the industry in the aftermath of the SNB crisis. This has not happened, but many brokerages have now reduced their maximum leverage offered, if not across the board than at least on more volatile and risky currencies.
Some pundits looked at these kinds of issues, saw the attention that was coming from regulators, and concluded that the model of retail Forex brokerage was going to become significantly more difficult, which would lead to a winnowing out across the industry. These fears now seem to have been unfounded, as the amount of money that remains to be made from retail Forex traders looks to be enough to warrant and hopefully offset all these risks.
Source
SNB Crisis: Retrospective & Impact | Trading Forex
One year ago the Forex world was rocked by the terrible SNB crisis when on January 15, 2015 the Swiss National Bank suddenly announced it was abandoning its currency’s peg to the Euro. The Swiss franc very quickly rose by almost 30% in value against most major currencies and for a period lasting about 45 minutes there was practically no liquidity in the currency, making it impossible to exit trades or indeed for most brokers to square their exposures. Stops were not honored, so all traders short CHF with leverage of more than about 3:1, which is quite low in Forex terms, had their accounts wiped out. Several brokers lost millions, with the most notable victim being FXCM, one of the largest and most reputable Forex brokers in the world. FXCM were seen as at risk of bankruptcy, which they avoided by taking several measures including a $300 million loan from Leucadia.
This SNB crisis is now regarded as the wildest and most dangerous incident in the modern Forex era. For a major global reserve currency such as the Swiss Franc to move in value by more than 25% in minutes during a period with practically no liquidity even from major banks was practically unthinkable. The nearest precedent is probably “Black Wednesday”: the day the British Pound was forced out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992 by George Soros’ Fund winning battle with the Bank of England over its peg to the German Deutschmark. However that was so long ago and occurred well before Forex became a retail market served by a plethora of retail Forex brokerages.
As its now been one year since this SNB crisis, we ask how this event has changed the behavior of Forex traders and Forex brokers.
Effect of SNB Crisis on Forex Traders
Most Forex traders were not personally hurt by the SNB crisis. However those that were long CHF in line with the prevailing long-term trend at the time were hit hard, with any leveraged by at least 4 to 1 wiped out completely. Some traders leveraged by greater amounts found themselves with negative balances, owing their brokers five or even six figure sums far well in excess of their deposits, if they had been generous with the amount of true leverage they were allowing themselves.Of course, there were also traders that were short of the Swiss Franc, and found themselves with massive profits on the day of the SNB crisis, although they may have found that where take profit orders had already been given on the trade, the positive slippage they got from their brokers wasn’t as good as the negative slippage charged to the losing traders on the same trade by the same brokers!
Most traders were neither positively nor negatively personally affected, but most traders did take note and were influenced by the event in several ways.
1. There is more demand now for brokers explicitly offering negative balance protection, i.e. depositors are guaranteed they cannot lose more than they deposit whatever happens.
2. There is a greater awareness of the risk of trading currencies that are the object of a stated peg to another currency by its central bank, as the CHF was pegged to the Euro by the SNB.
3. Forex in general is seen as more risky, as compared to stocks and commodities major Forex rates generally fluctuate by significantly smaller amounts.
4. There is less trust in the SNB in the aftermath of the SNB crisis as just a few days before abandoning the peg they publicly stated they had no intention of doing so.
5. There is less trust in Forex brokers although it is also understood that most Forex brokers were quite blameless as it was actually their liquidity providers that pulled liquidity in most cases, and not the brokers themselves.
6. There is more fear of leverage, or at least a greater awareness of what using even moderately high leverage can do to a trading account when a sudden and unusually strong market event occurs.
Let’s now turn to how Forex brokers have been affected by the SNB crisis. It will be obvious that most of the effects on Forex brokers are just the other side of the impact on traders already listed previously.
Effect of SNB Crisis on Forex Brokers
It was assumed within minutes of the SNB crisis hitting that there was going to be financial chaos in the brokerage arena, which would result in a sizeable number of Forex brokerages being forced into bankruptcy or takeover. In fact, these predictions were wide of the mark, with only a few brokers ultimately being forced under. However FXCM’s share price dropped to under $1 as it became apparent that they required a huge loan with tough terms, although it now seems as though they have been able to weather the storm successfully.One of the biggest ironies of the SNB crisis is that the “true” brokers with models based more upon passing on the best prices and less upon making a market were the brokers that were most exposed to losses. A result of this has been a somewhat greater popularity in market making, and we can see that FXCM is now offering a new “dealing desk” account type.
Traffic has gone two ways on the issue of offering customers negative balance protection. Several brokers that previously offered it have removed it from their terms and conditions (notably FXCM). However there are a few brokers that previously offered who decided to continue with it and are using it as marketing point to assuage traders of their worst fears. Of course, many brokers found themselves owed large negative balances by thousands of retail clients after the SNB crisis, and this debt was not much good on paper as the costs of pursuing the debts would probably have been greater than the total amount recouped. The savvier Forex traders became aware of this, calling the bluffs of Forex brokers that were writing to the owners of negative balances offering 50% off the bill for immediate settlement.
The issue of leverage gained a lot of traction, as the large negative balances that some retail traders found themselves owing came to be seen – justifiably in the case of very inexperienced traders offered huge amounts of leverage – as a result of leverage. Therefore there was a lot of talk about regulators placing severe restrictions on leverage that would effectively strangle the industry in the aftermath of the SNB crisis. This has not happened, but many brokerages have now reduced their maximum leverage offered, if not across the board than at least on more volatile and risky currencies.
Some pundits looked at these kinds of issues, saw the attention that was coming from regulators, and concluded that the model of retail Forex brokerage was going to become significantly more difficult, which would lead to a winnowing out across the industry. These fears now seem to have been unfounded, as the amount of money that remains to be made from retail Forex traders looks to be enough to warrant and hopefully offset all these risks.
Source
SNB Crisis: Retrospective & Impact | Trading Forex
One year ago the Forex world was rocked by the terrible SNB crisis when on January 15, 2015 the Swiss National Bank suddenly announced it was abandoning its currency’s peg to the Euro. The Swiss franc very quickly rose by almost 30% in value against most major currencies and for a period lasting about 45 minutes there was practically no liquidity in the currency, making it impossible to exit trades or indeed for most brokers to square their exposures. Stops were not honored, so all traders short CHF with leverage of more than about 3:1, which is quite low in Forex terms, had their accounts wiped out. Several brokers lost millions, with the most notable victim being FXCM, one of the largest and most reputable Forex brokers in the world. FXCM were seen as at risk of bankruptcy, which they avoided by taking several measures including a $300 million loan from Leucadia.
This SNB crisis is now regarded as the wildest and most dangerous incident in the modern Forex era. For a major global reserve currency such as the Swiss Franc to move in value by more than 25% in minutes during a period with practically no liquidity even from major banks was practically unthinkable. The nearest precedent is probably “Black Wednesday”: the day the British Pound was forced out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992 by George Soros’ Fund winning battle with the Bank of England over its peg to the German Deutschmark. However that was so long ago and occurred well before Forex became a retail market served by a plethora of retail Forex brokerages.
As its now been one year since this SNB crisis, we ask how this event has changed the behavior of Forex traders and Forex brokers.
Effect of SNB Crisis on Forex Traders
Most Forex traders were not personally hurt by the SNB crisis. However those that were long CHF in line with the prevailing long-term trend at the time were hit hard, with any leveraged by at least 4 to 1 wiped out completely. Some traders leveraged by greater amounts found themselves with negative balances, owing their brokers five or even six figure sums far well in excess of their deposits, if they had been generous with the amount of true leverage they were allowing themselves.Of course, there were also traders that were short of the Swiss Franc, and found themselves with massive profits on the day of the SNB crisis, although they may have found that where take profit orders had already been given on the trade, the positive slippage they got from their brokers wasn’t as good as the negative slippage charged to the losing traders on the same trade by the same brokers!
Most traders were neither positively nor negatively personally affected, but most traders did take note and were influenced by the event in several ways.
1. There is more demand now for brokers explicitly offering negative balance protection, i.e. depositors are guaranteed they cannot lose more than they deposit whatever happens.
2. There is a greater awareness of the risk of trading currencies that are the object of a stated peg to another currency by its central bank, as the CHF was pegged to the Euro by the SNB.
3. Forex in general is seen as more risky, as compared to stocks and commodities major Forex rates generally fluctuate by significantly smaller amounts.
4. There is less trust in the SNB in the aftermath of the SNB crisis as just a few days before abandoning the peg they publicly stated they had no intention of doing so.
5. There is less trust in Forex brokers although it is also understood that most Forex brokers were quite blameless as it was actually their liquidity providers that pulled liquidity in most cases, and not the brokers themselves.
6. There is more fear of leverage, or at least a greater awareness of what using even moderately high leverage can do to a trading account when a sudden and unusually strong market event occurs.
Let’s now turn to how Forex brokers have been affected by the SNB crisis. It will be obvious that most of the effects on Forex brokers are just the other side of the impact on traders already listed previously.
Effect of SNB Crisis on Forex Brokers
It was assumed within minutes of the SNB crisis hitting that there was going to be financial chaos in the brokerage arena, which would result in a sizeable number of Forex brokerages being forced into bankruptcy or takeover. In fact, these predictions were wide of the mark, with only a few brokers ultimately being forced under. However FXCM’s share price dropped to under $1 as it became apparent that they required a huge loan with tough terms, although it now seems as though they have been able to weather the storm successfully.One of the biggest ironies of the SNB crisis is that the “true” brokers with models based more upon passing on the best prices and less upon making a market were the brokers that were most exposed to losses. A result of this has been a somewhat greater popularity in market making, and we can see that FXCM is now offering a new “dealing desk” account type.
Traffic has gone two ways on the issue of offering customers negative balance protection. Several brokers that previously offered it have removed it from their terms and conditions (notably FXCM). However there are a few brokers that previously offered who decided to continue with it and are using it as marketing point to assuage traders of their worst fears. Of course, many brokers found themselves owed large negative balances by thousands of retail clients after the SNB crisis, and this debt was not much good on paper as the costs of pursuing the debts would probably have been greater than the total amount recouped. The savvier Forex traders became aware of this, calling the bluffs of Forex brokers that were writing to the owners of negative balances offering 50% off the bill for immediate settlement.
The issue of leverage gained a lot of traction, as the large negative balances that some retail traders found themselves owing came to be seen – justifiably in the case of very inexperienced traders offered huge amounts of leverage – as a result of leverage. Therefore there was a lot of talk about regulators placing severe restrictions on leverage that would effectively strangle the industry in the aftermath of the SNB crisis. This has not happened, but many brokerages have now reduced their maximum leverage offered, if not across the board than at least on more volatile and risky currencies.
Some pundits looked at these kinds of issues, saw the attention that was coming from regulators, and concluded that the model of retail Forex brokerage was going to become significantly more difficult, which would lead to a winnowing out across the industry. These fears now seem to have been unfounded, as the amount of money that remains to be made from retail Forex traders looks to be enough to warrant and hopefully offset all these risks.
Source
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