Comment Text:
i0-001
COIMMENT
CL-06655
From:
Sent:
To:
Subject:
Calvin Butcher
Tuesday, March 9, 2010 6:17 AM
secretary
Regulation of Retail Forex
Dear Sir or Madam,
I have been working in the information technology industry in the UK for close to twelve years. In that time I have
been made redundant five times and since 1996 my salary hasn't risen a single penny, despite rocketing prices and
the fact that I am now most often required to do three jobs: that of a systems administrator, a project manager,
and a software developer. The number of protocols I've had to learn has doubled: I'm university educated, 38, I
live in a shared house, and I'm broke.
Recently I left my dreadfully underpaid £25k per annum job to trade the Forex market. It has taken me a year of
reading, saving, and training in order to do so. Thus far I have earned roughly £35k pro rata, within my first month
of live trading. I have been trading profitably within a simulation for the past 6 months. This is with a leverage of
50:1 (I trade with OANDA, a broker who self-restrict their leverage to this sensible level in order to protect their
traders), something I intend to scale down once I am able to trade larger lots (i.e. I've made some profit that I
can pour back into my trading account).
I am tremendously happy to have made the leap away from my economically and emotionally traumatising career
past.
I don't support the regulation of Forex trading to 10: 1, obviously. Mainly for the reason that it would greatly restrict
my ability to earn a reasonable salary and that it may force me back to an overworked, underpaid, and poorly
regulated industry, something I simply could not do: particularly after spending the last 12 months obtaining the
funds and training to change careers. Frankly, it very nearly broke me. But I am also against this as it is
aggressively offensive to the spirit of the free market, restricts the earnings of the small trader while seeming - like
everything else these days - to green light the appallingly destructive and civily-restrictive practices of corporations.
Only recently the leverage was regulated to 100: 1. Surely there hasn't been adequate time to asssess the impact of
this restriction, so why now reduce it suddenly even further to 10: 1? If the CFTC wishes to protect people, why not
regulate the advertising of Forex (in the same way we do cigarettes and alcohol here in Britain) or retail entry to it
(say a minimum deposit of 5000USD as is generally recommended): of course trading is risky and of course only a
small number of traders are successful: this is the process of competition and trading as a skilled profession. Not
everyone chooses to do heavyweight boxing for a living - and get knocked out in their first fight - because it pays
well, for example. And why not regulate the unskilled gambling industry? This is far, far more destructive and yet -
here in the UK, certainly - it is serenaded by our ruiing party politicians. I'm utterly perplexed by this move and am
frightened by the motives I feel may lay behind it: that is, the furthering of the divide between the state, the
corporations that are furthering their control of it, and their subjects: the "free" civilians of the "free and democratic"
world.
Regulation can have a purpose in two opposing directions. Such regulation to the proposed extent is, in my opinion,
an affront to liberty.
Yours sincerely,
C Butcher
Barnstable House
Manor Road
Brize Norton
OXON
OX18 3NA
