Comment Text:
i0-001
COMMENT
CL-01253
From:
Sent:
To:
Subject:
Jim Oldfather
Wednesday, January 20, 2010 10:01 PM
secretary
Regulation of Retail Forex - RIN 3038-AC61
To Whom It May Concern,
I am writing in regards to the new purposed regulation on the Retail Forex market (RIN 3038-AC61).
As I understand, the proposal is to change the leverage in retail forex customer accounts to a 10-to-1
limitation, which means 10:1 leverage would be the maximum amount allowed for all Forex traders in
the U.S. I think this puts the individual retail trader like myself at more risk.
To give you a quick background...I am an individual trader in the Forex market, full time employee at an
IT company, father and husband. I think it is an absolute mistake to lower the leverage on the retail
Forex trader population. I only have ONE reason and it is this. The reason is because higher leverage
allows me to put less money with a broker that could go out of business! It means LESS RISK to me as
a hard-working individual trader.
Put another way, if I have $10,000 balance I can trade with, I do not have to deposit the entire $10,000
amount with the broker if I have the current high leverage. With high leverage, I only need to send in
$5,000 to the broker and it allows me to put the other $5000 in my safe FDIC savings account. If the
10:1 lower leverage gets put into place, I now have to send my full $10,000 to the broker to trade and
that puts more of my hard earned money at risk. The irony of the situation is I truly never even use
leverage as high at 10:1 because I don't send all my trading money to the broker. As stated before, I put
that money that is not needed, into an 1NG Direct savings account and collect my 2-3% in interest. This
model lowers my risk. I'm being redundant on purpose to make my point and make sure I'm explaining
clearly because it is very important to me.
If you need clarification on anything I said please follow-up with me as I will clarify. Thanks for your
time.
Regards,
James Oldfather
13250 W 15th Drive
Golden, Colorado 80401
cell: 720-224- 8812
