Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
As of 2019 April, the spot forex market traded about $6.6 trillion daily, including currency options and futures contracts. With such a huge sum of money floating around in an unregulated spot market that trades instantly, OTC, and with no accountability, forex frauds provide unscrupulous operators the opportunity to make fortunes in a short span of time. While many once-popular frauds have been finished as a result of substantial enforcement proceedings by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the founding of the self-regulatory National Futures Association (NFA) in 1982, some old scams persist, and new ones emerge.
The Point-Spread fraud
An ancient point-spread forex fraud depended on computerized bid-ask spread manipulation. The point gap between bid and ask essentially reflects the commission of a back-and-forth transaction handled by a broker. These spreads usually vary between currency pairs. The scam arises when the point spreads between brokers differ significantly.
For example, in the EUR/USD, some brokers provide spreads of seven pips or more rather than the standard two-to-three-point spread. (A pip is the smallest price change made by a specific exchange rate based on market convention.) The smallest change is that of the last decimal point because most major currency pairs are priced to four decimal places.) Add four or more pips to each trade, and any potential earnings from a good deal can be eaten away by commissions, depending on how the forex broker arranges their trading fees.
This scam has subsided in the recent decade, but be wary of any offshore retail brokers who are not licensed by the CFTC, NFA, or their country of origin. When confronted with actions, these tendencies persist, and it is fairly easy for corporations to pack up and leave with the money. Many people imagined a jail cell for these computer operations. However, the majority of violators have historically been US-based corporations rather than offshore ones.
The Signal-Seller scam
The signal seller is a common modern-day scam. Signal sellers are retail firms, pooled asset managers, managed account companies, or individual traders who offer a system that purports to discover advantageous periods to buy or sell a currency pair based on professional advice that will make anyone wealthy for a daily, weekly, or monthly fee. They brag about their enormous knowledge and trading abilities, as well as testimonials from others attesting to the person’s abilities as a trader and friend, as well as the large sums of money that this person has gathered for them. All the amateur trader has to do is pay X dollars to receive trade guidance.
Many signal-seller scammers merely take money from a small number of traders and then disappear. Some will recommend a nice deal every now and then to keep the signal money going. This new scam is getting more prevalent. Although there are honest signal sellers who perform trade functions as intended, it is prudent to remain suspicious.
Scamming by “Robots” in Today’s Market
In some forex-developed trading systems, an old and new fraud presents themselves. These con artists brag about their system’s ability to generate automatic transactions that create significant sums of money while you sleep. Because the technique is now completely automated with computers, the new term is “robot.” In any scenario, many of these systems have never been presented to a third party for formal review or evaluat
ion.
The evaluation of a forex robot must comprise the evaluation of a trading system’s parameters and optimization algorithms. The system will generate random buy and sell signals if any of the settings or optimization codes are wrong. As a result, inexperienced traders will only gamble. Although there are tested systems on the market, prospective traders should perform their own research before investing in one of these ways.
Other Things to Think About
Many trading systems have traditionally been fairly expensive, costing up to $5,000 or more. This might be considered a scam in and of itself. Today, no trader should pay more than a few hundred dollars for a good method. Be especially wary of system salesmen who provide programs at outrageous prices in exchange for a guarantee of spectacular outcomes. Instead, look for legitimate sellers whose systems have been thoroughly evaluated so that they can potentially generate income.
Another ongoing scam is the mixing of monies. Individuals cannot trace the exact performance of their investments without a record of segregated accounts. This makes it simpler for retail enterprises to pay extravagant wages, acquire mansions, vehicles, and planes, or simply disappear with the funds. Other scams and warning indicators arise when brokers won’t enable the withdrawal of cash from investor accounts or when issues exist inside the trading platform. Can you, for example, enter or quit a transaction during a tumultuous market movement following an economic announcement? If you are unable to withdraw funds, warning lights should illuminate. If the trading platform fails to meet your liquidity requirements, warning lights should flash once more.
Key Takeaways!
Conduct due research on the forex broker you’re contemplating by visiting the NFA’s Background Affiliation Status Information Center (BASIC). Many improvements have driven out the crooks and old schemes while also legitimizing the system for the many decent businesses. However, be aware of new forex scams; the draw and temptation of enormous earnings will always attract more and more adept scammers to this market. To be on the safer side, companies like FundsTrace, which is an investigative recovery organization that is staffed with industry experts who can analyze your case, gather data and information regarding your perpetrators and catch your scammer for you. They don’t just stop there; they ensure that the scammer returns 100% of the stolen amount back to the victim.