Federal Court Freezes Assets of Texas Trading Firms M25 Investments, Inc. and M37 Investments, LLC, and Scott Kear, Sr., Jeffrey Lyon and David Seaman, Charged by the CFTC with an $8 Million Forex Fraud
Court appoints a receiver to indentify assets and funds owed customers

Washington, DC — The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced it obtained an emergency court order freezing assets held by defendants M25 Investments, Inc., M37 Investments, LLC, Scott P. Kear, Sr., Jeffrey L. Lyon, all of Waxahachie, Tex., and David G. Seaman, of Arlington, Tex. The court’s order also prohibits the destruction of records and appoints a receiver to identify assets, customers and amounts owed customers.

The court’s order stems from a CFTC anti-fraud enforcement action filed on September 29, 2009, in the U.S. District Court in Dallas, charging the defendants with fraudulently soliciting at least $8 million from approximately 224 customers in connection with the trading of foreign currency (forex), forex options and commodity futures contracts. The defendants ran their alleged scheme out of their offices in Texas, West Virginia and Mississippi. Many of the defendants’ customers were elderly and knew each other through churches in West Virginia, Mississippi, Texas, Maryland and other states, according to the CFTC complaint.
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Hi everyone

To change the subject for once in a while, here you have a picture of Saturday’s Correfoc for kids. The Correfoc goes around some downtown streets during La Mercè festival. At night, the Correfoc for adults takes place and that’s serious stuff

Wikipedia: “Correfocs are amongst the most striking of Catalonia’s festive events: “devils” play with fire and with the people. These devils are not the incarnation of evil; they are sprightly and festive, dancing to the sound of the drums and the traditional gralla, while they set off their fireworks.”

The guy with the U2 at Crock Park t-shirt it is me and on my shoulders my 4 years old daughter Martina, even though she wears her sister’s Barcelona Futbol Club t- shirt as hers is too big for her yet

My kids were very afraid of fireworks, drums and noise at the beginning, but they left fear behind very soon so here I am watching over them as we all suffering parents do

Francesc

Hi everyone

Forex.es, FXstreet’s Spanish Forex Forum kept its extraodinary performance in September reaching new highs in unique visitors and visits after touching 3,444 unique visitors and 6,297 visits the week of September 20th to 26th 2009.

Previous highs were at 3,437 unique visitors and 5,948 visits of the week from August 30th to September 5th 2009.

Well done www.forex.es!

Francesc

The Practice Chapter of Unit A has finally been released!

Pratice A contains:
* Extra contents:

1. The Time Factor: Estimating Intersection Points

2. How To Prepare A Trade Based On S&R Analysis

3. The Fear Of Leverage

* Four Assessements made of a total of 284 questions (single and mulptiple choices, short text field questions, image selections…)

http://www.fxstreet.com/education/learning-center/unit-1/practice/

Auto Evaluation and Practice
The Practice chapters are made of additional theory and an assessment module to test your knowledge. The question pool for the entire Learning Center comprises more than 1000 questions and case studies related to the Forex trading. Each Practice chapter contains approximately 250 questions. Many answers reveal additional insights, useful links and references.

BENEFITS

• An educational challenge: build a solid fundamental knowledge of FOREX trading before doing any other training.
• A competitive advantage: shorten your learning curve by focusing on a few potential edges only.
• Enhanced awareness: get to know your strengths and weaknesses through self-evaluation.
• Cost-effectiveness: an efficient and affordable way to increase your knowledge and become a pro

Do you know it all about FX? Test yourself and beef up your trading!

Enter now!: http://www.fxstreet.com/education/learning-center/unit-1/practice/

We hope you will enjoy! Don’t hesitate to leave us your feedback:

http://www.fxstreet.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=72

Francesc

COMPLAINT:

On June 10, 2009, NFA issued a Complaint alleging that ACM failed to file required financial reports in a timely manner. The Complaint also alleged that Anderson failed to supervise ACM’s operations.

ANSWER:

On June 30, 2009, Anderson filed an Answer to the Complaint in which he denied the material allegations contained therein.

DECISION:

On September 25, 2009, Anderson was ordered to refrain from being a principal of an NFA Member for one year; or, alternatively, if Anderson elects to become a principal of an NFA Member during the one-year period, then he was ordered to pay a $5,000 fine to NFA within thirty days of becoming a principal.

ACM USA Case Summary
Edward George Anderson Case Summary

Interesting article that highlights the pros and cons of trading Forex

Francesc

Small Investors Make Big Bets on Currencies
By Wall Street Journal
The dollar is zigzagging, falling below the 90 yen mark Friday and testing the depths it plumbed against the euro a year ago. That kind of action is music to the ears of investors such as Ray Firetag.
As most of America slept on a recent Monday night, Mr. Firetag was in front of his computer in Elk Grove, Calif., wagering on the Australian dollar.
Gold, silver and oil had slipped, and trading in Asian stocks had been weak. The 43-year-old speculator figured the Australian dollar, strongly tied to commodities, would spurt higher against the Japanese yen, then fall as investors overseas responded to weaker commodity prices. He was right, and his trade proved profitable.
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Interesting…. trying to improve the appealing of trading futures by making it a mirror of FX?

Francesc

MB Trading Expands Intraday Futures Margin to 4-to-1
Manhattan Beach Trading Financial Services, Inc. (“MBTFS”), a technology-driven, low-commission brokerage specializing in order routing in Equities, Futures, and Options through various global exchanges and electronic networks, announced Tuesday that it now offers 4-to-1 intraday margin leverage on all futures contracts offered by the firm.
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(Dow Jones)- The head of CME Group Inc. (CME) said Wednesday that a renewed attempt to break into clearing the $2 trillion-a-day over-the-counter currency market signaled a new direction for the exchange operator.
CME plans to start clearing OTC forex products by the end of the year, 11 months after pulling the plug on a loss-making joint venture to trade and clear currencies.
Craig Donohue, CEO, said that some previous efforts to expand into the OTC market have been too “revolutionary” for participants.
He said that the world’s largest derivatives exchange will focus on pitching the clearing of OTC products, rather than bundling clearing with trade execution.
“We have to respond to the market,” Donohue said in an interview on the sidelines of an industry conference in Chicago.
CME and other exchanges had identified the OTC market as a key growth driver, even before regulators on both sides of the Atlantic started a push last year for products normally traded bilaterally to be channeled through exchanges.
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Micropayments: the next big online revenue model? by IESE Business School

When Google enters a new line of business, it’s a safe bet that this business will get a lot of attention from the technology ecosystem. Micropayments, an already hot trend this year, got a further boost when Google announced two weeks ago that it will offer micropayment services through its Checkout system.

Micropayments are transfers of small amounts of money. Small may mean anything from several dollars to fractions of a cent. Such payments in theory should have a big potential on the internet, where they would fill the gap between free (or advertisement-sponsored) content and things that cost over several dollars. However, several individual areas notwithstanding (iTunes being the most prominent example), they are yet to be widely adopted.
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Notice I-09-18

September 24, 2009

Effective Date of Amendments to NFA Financial Requirements Sections 11 and 12 and the Interpretive Notice Regarding Forex Transactions

NFA has received notice that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has approved changes to NFA Financial Requirements Sections 11 and 12 and related changes to the Interpretive Notice titled “Forex Transactions.” The amendments adopt an alternative net capital requirement for Forex Dealer Members (FDMs) and eliminate the existing exemption from the security deposit requirement. These changes will become effective on November 30, 2009.

The amendments to Section 11 revise the existing alternative net capital requirement that is based on an FDM’s liabilities to customers.¹ As of November 30, 2009, the alternative requirement is $20 million plus 5% of the amount of customer liabilities over $10 million. FDMs that exclusively use straight-through-processing for their customer transactions are exempt from this alternative requirement and need only maintain the $20 million minimum (unless the firm is subject to a higher requirement under FR Section 1).

The amendments to Section 12 eliminate the existing security deposit exemption for FDMs that maintain 150% of their required net capital. This means that, beginning on November 30, 2009, all FDMs must collect a customer security deposit of at least 1% for the currencies listed in Section 12 and at least 4% for all other currencies.²

NFA’s submission letters to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission include of the revised language and more detailed descriptions of the changes. You can access electronic copies of the February 23, 2009 submission letters at http://www.nfa.futures.org/news/PDF/CFTC/FRSec11_IntNotc021909.pdf (for the changes to Section 11) and http://www.nfa.futures.org/news/PDF/CFTC/FRSec12_IntNotc021909.pdf (for the changes to Section 12).

Questions concerning these requirements should be directed to Valerie Kretschmer, Manager, Compliance (vkretschmer@nfa.futures.org or 312-781-1290) or to Sharon Pendleton, Director, Compliance, (spendleton@nfa.futures.org or 312-781-1401).