Comment Text:
i0-001
COMMENT
CL-00369
From:
Sent:
To:
Subject:
Barnaby Beech
Monday, January 18, 2010 7:06 PM
secretary
Regulation of Retail Forex
As a participating retail forex customer, I am interested in the motivation behind the proposed legislation
to reduce available margins to 1:10, indicating that any trader would have to provide one thousand
dollars in margin to be able to trade a single mini lot. As someone who has benefited extensively from
higher margin levels, e.g. 1:100 and even 1:200, the thought of losing the capacity to leverage larger
sums is disheartening. At the risk of appearing callous, could the motivation to reduce the trading
margins be traced to larger banks who wish to remain as isolated as possible from the increasing
numbers of the retail forex customers and reduce their ability to take profits? The only other motive I
can think of for the introduction of such legislation is consumer protection, which, I believe, is more
constructively served by allowing the market to regulate itself. In other words, to allow a trader to lose
big, if they should be so unwitting as to allow that to happen, as opposed to imposing protectionist
measures which would bar many investors from participating in the market at all. That is, of course, if
consumer protection is truly the issue behind the proposal for such legislation. Thank you for your time.
