Interactive Brokers to cut off US forex clients Sept 1

[thenews]

The war on US retail forex trading continues

It's about to get even tougher to find a forex broker for Americans.

Interactive Brokers is leaving the US retail forex market on September 1. Various clients report receiving a message saying that only US-based clients with $10 million or more will be eligible to make leverage forex trades. All others will be restricted to unleveraged forex trading.

To be clear, the message only affects Americans trading with Interactive Brokers, not Interactive Brokers clients from other countries.

Effective September 1 2016, Interactive Brokers will require that only accounts held by "Eligible Contract Participants" may open leveraged forex positions.

An "Eligible Contract Participant" generally is an individual or organization with assets of over $10 MM (or $5 MM if trades are hedging). See KB2731 for the definition of an Eligible Contract Participant.

If you are or may be an "Eligible Contract Participant", please review KB2732 for instructions on how to complete a required questionnaire to continue trading leveraged forex.

If you do not qualify as an "Eligible Contract Participant", after September 1, 2016 you will be able to close your existing leveraged forex positions but you will not be able to do any additional leveraged forex trades.

NOTE: This Notice does not apply to currency trades that are un-leveraged "conversions" of one currency to another. This Notice also does not apply to margin trades for stocks denominated in foreign currency. Those trades are not affected by this Notice.

The retail landscape for US traders has been decimated in the past few years as regulators cracked down and increased regulation.

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