Forex Broker Regulation - Part One

What good is forex broker that you can trade and make money with, but when it comes time to take your money, they don't give it to you, because they don’t have it?

Forex Broker Bust Story. Refco was the biggest forex broker that was worth around $4 billion dollars. In October of 2005, Refco shut down its operations and every trader who had money with them got screwed big time.

Refco was regulated and for some time they were spending not only their profits but also deposits of their clients.
The amounts of money that traders saw on their trading platforms and the amounts of money Refco had in their bank accounts were different by $400 million.

So when the news hit the wire that Refco is running at such deficit, traders panicked and started asking for withdrawals. The only problem was that Refco was $400 million short of what it owed to traders.

There was a trial of course, and whatever assets the company had the court ordered to distribute among traders. I knew some people that had money with Refco. As far as I remember, after all assets were sold they got around 10% of what was owed to them. That means if person had $10,000 in his trading account, he got only $1,000 of it.