Broker Updates During Feb. 1-7

Vietnam

Unrestricted Investment Access

1. Squared Financial adds GameStop and others with unrestricted access. The broker has added all the popular stocks, which saw a massive surge in demand.

Retail FX Deposits

2. CFTC data shows US Retail FX deposits shrunk $23M in December. The worst performer for the month was GAIN Capital which saw an overall fall of $10 million to $220.7 million.

Indonesia

Investment Blacklist

3. Malaysias financial regulator today has updated its list of FX and investment websites that should be avoided, the main reason being the fact that these companies were not registered in the country.

Notably, the updated list includes names of fraudulent clone platforms that have been posing as well-known, regulated brokers around the world, including OctaFX and FXTM. Both firms are heavily regulated in Europe, but such authorizations dont entail passporting rights to promote its products in Malaysia.

Thailand

FCA Warning

4. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has issued a warning over rising clone firm investment scams in the country. The authority mentioned that the consumers lost nearly £78 million while investing in fraudulent companies imitating genuine investment firms between January and December 2020.

According to an official announcement, the affected consumers lost £45,242 each on average during the last year. The FCA mentioned that the coronavirus pandemic escalated the clone firm scams in the UK as 77% of investors admitted that they were unsure about clone investment firms.

Japan

Trading Data

5. Monthly Trading Volume & Open Positions for Over-The-Counter Retail Margin FX trading.

Currency Pair：All

Unit: 1 million JPY

The data in this file are a summary of figures reported by association members participating in the monthly statistical report on Over-The-Counter Retail FX Margin Trading, published by The Financial Futures Association of Japan (FFAJ).

Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)

Trading Platforms Performance

6. The Moscow Exchange has summed up the performance of trading operators in the markets in December 2020. FINAM has finally established itself in the rating of the leaders of the futures and options market in terms of the number of active clients, becoming the undisputed leader of this rating at the end of the year.

Silver Margin

7. Given the recent heightened volatility in the Silver price, FxPro has decided to increase the minimum margin requirements for FxPro Global Markets traders. With 0-5 lots, the required margin is 0.5%, with 5.01-10 it is 1.0%, with 10.01-15 it is 2.0%. The maximum amount of Silver per client is 15 lots.