Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) ordered the US branch of the forex broker IBFX, a.k.a. Tradestation Forex, Inc. to pay a fine of $1 million. According to the announcement on the regulator’s website, the civil monetary penalty is imposed on the broker for failing to meet capital requirements in the period January 15, 2015 – February 5, 2015. Furthermore, the CFTC found that IBFX failed to notify it of the matter and to diligently supervise its employees in violation of the regulations.
The penalty is also for violating a previous CFTC order from December 2014, when the regulator fined the US branch of IBFX $600 000 for similar offenses. Back then the CFTC found that the broker fell below the capital requirements three times between December 2011 and June 2014.
At the same time, the CFTC has taken into account that the broker has taken significant measures to remedy the situation, once the deficiencies were discovered and cooperated closely with the regulator.
IBFX, a subsidiary of the broker-dealer and futures commission merchant TradeStation, which is owned by the Japan’s Monex Group (TYO:8698), has been through some turmoil recently. In February this year the US and the Australian branches of IBFX sold their client accounts on its proprietary trading platform TradeStaion to the US broker Oanda. They were automatically transferred on March 4.
On the same day both the US and the Australian IBFX branches announced they are ceasing operations and posted almost identical notices on their websites:
IBFX US
