Comment for Proposed Rule 75 FR 3281

Comment Text:

i0-001
COMMENT
CL-00159
From:
Sent:
To:
Subject:
James Ricketts
Saturday, January 16, 2010 8:24 AM
secretary
Regulation of Retail Forex
I am writing you in regards to the proposal RIN 3038-AC61 on new regulations being considered for the retail forex market.
Having read through the items I (as most traders agree) feel that more oversight and registration is need to protect us. But to
reduce the amount of margin available makes no sense and I strongly oppose this idea. The problems do not lie with the
traders being over leverage, the core issues lie within the brokers taken advantage of the trading public, by various
unscrupulous activities such as the widening of spreads, slippage, rescinding profitable trades etc, all done internally to make
the client lose.
I realize some firms offer leverage of 500:1 and yes possibly this can be viewed as a bit out of line but to cut ALL leverage
down to the proposed 10:1 is absurd. This will put an end to 90+% of all retail business here in the USA and send it all off
shore. Meaning a HUGE number of jobs will be lost here in the states. That is a guarantee!!!
My suggestion is If you must cut back on the amount of leverage being offered then why not do it in stages., The first would be
to cut back on the 500:1 and put a cap at say 200:1, and see how that plays out. If the underlying problem of over leverage
still persists you can always cut it back a bit more. But 10:1 is economic suicide for the large and growing Retail business.
In closing the entire retail forex community of hard working, independent traders urge you to take out this part of the proposal.
This economy has taken enough blows in the past 2 years. We do not need another black eye.
James Ricketts.
Independent Trader