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PFGBest Accounts Frozen (PFG scandal big thread)


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PFGBest Accounts Frozen (PFG scandal big thread)

  #111 (permalink)
 kevinkdog   is a Vendor
 
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shanmugs View Post
Phew!

------------------

From: Nicholas Wittenburg
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2012 3:21 PM
To: xxx
Subject: PFGBEST Account

Dear xxx



Thank you for your relationship with PFGBEST. I was hoping to follow up with you in regards to your old account with us. I wanted to see how everything was going and to see if you were still trading futures. If you are I was hoping that you would consider coming back to PFGBEST. If you could please let me know.



Best regards,



Nick Wittenburg





Nick Wittenburg

Senior Customer Relations Representative

One Peregrine Way

Cedar Falls, IA 50613
1-800-361-6855

01-319-277-5240 Int'l

319.277.0880 Fax


I feel bad from Nick at PFG, and the other good honest people there. Nick is a really nice and helpful guy, and doesn't deserve this.

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  #112 (permalink)
 
furytrader's Avatar
 furytrader 
Lake Forest, IL USA
 
Experience: Intermediate
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Even if you didn't trade through PFG, this is bad - at a minimum, this means less players (and cash) in the market, which is worse for everybody ...

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  #113 (permalink)
 
Skidboot's Avatar
 Skidboot 
Houston, TX
 
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kevinkdog View Post
I feel bad from Nick at PFG, and the other good honest people there. Nick is a really nice and helpful guy, and doesn't deserve this.

I agree. Nick had been very nice to work with. I left purely because of data (slow) and execution.

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  #114 (permalink)
 tastypaint 
los angles
 
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I taught that I was being smart and sim trading so I would not go bust when I went live. I had set aside my start up capital in a PFG account. So much for that plan.

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  #115 (permalink)
 
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 djkiwi 
Mercer Island WA
 
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Guys, this just confirms my suspicion of the futures industry being the wild wild west.

Bear in mind MF Global collapsed on the 31st October 2011. The question is what have the regulators been doing since then? They have done nothing to improve basic auditing processes to check client funds are appropriately segregated. They should have moved immediately to address this area. It is not difficult to organize controls with the banks. There are not many brokers to monitor. The regulators have been negligent and should reimburse all losses. Of course they won't. The other issue is most regulators are old time industry insiders and appear more interested in protecting the firms as opposed to client funds.

SIPC

As someone pointed out this only covers equities accounts up to $500k and $250k in cash and not futures or commodities. The problem is the total SIPC fund is only $1 billion so it doesn't take much to wipe it out. If you trade equities and futures then IB or TD Ameritrade are good choices although TD fills suck. Both have additional insurance which insures the cash to $900k, up from $250k SIPC. I have most of my funds at these two entities for this reason. 80% of my trading is equities swing trading. Both can be traded through a ninjatrader multi-broker license.

The caveat is if you only trade futures and they go under you will probably be out of luck as the cash would be deemed futures related cash and not covered by the SIPC. The other issue with IB is it appears they may also be commingling cash.

The cycling of cash to different brokers does not help as you could be playing Russian Roulette. You could be cycling at the wrong time just as the new one goes under.

Cheers
DJ

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  #116 (permalink)
 
Big Mike's Avatar
 Big Mike 
Manta, Ecuador
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tastypaint View Post
I taught that I was being smart and sim trading so I would not go bust when I went live. I had set aside my start up capital in a PFG account. So much for that plan.

Ugh, sorry. How long ago did you fund? Have you tried to contact PFG directly or submit your wire-out request?

Mike

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  #117 (permalink)
 Warren 
East Central Kansas,USA
 
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Punishment for breaking laws needs an overhaul here in the US.

There really is no discouraging factor to ward of a potential crooks.

You think Corzine was worrying about the punishment if his plan failed?

Not likely, he knew his reputation and status would take a hit, but he would still
have his connections to political power streams.


Where is it that a theft gets his hand cut off for stealing? Iran?

Do you see many hand-less people in Iran?

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  #118 (permalink)
 
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 Jura   is a Vendor
 
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kevinkdog View Post
1. Have multiple accounts through different clearing firms.

2. Put as little as possible in each acct - tell yourself you'll be OK if any one account suddenly vaporizes.

3. You could also wire money in and out every day/week/month, to not leave extra idle funds sitting around in a futures brokerage.

I'm not sure how much this would help - aren't you increasing your risks in practice by spreading over a lot of brokerage firms? If you use this strategy, inadvertently you have to deposit money with smaller, privately held brokers (since there aren't that many brokers that work with each trading platform and cover the markets the trader is interested in).


Big Mike View Post
But that wasn't my point, I was more upset about reading how NFA placed a phone call to the bank to learn the true account balance, apparently they had forgot that step before when verifying the balances. If they have the purview to get the bank balance today, why did they not have it yesterday?

This is a real issue, since, as you already said in another posts, it begs the question which broker is next? In other words, what if the NFA decides that verifying the data is a worthwhile undertaking and starts calling more broker's banks? Apparently, the American regulators didn't make it very hard for PFGBest and MF Global to defraud their customers - so which other brokers took advantage of the opportunity to be "creative"?

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  #119 (permalink)
 flyg 
Toledo, OH
 
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PFG and others are scrambling to earn money on accounts..In the past they used to earn it in the safe haven of interest on Treasuries and the like...What Ben Bernanke has done is push a lot of these companies into taking uncustomary risk in search for returns...See what you have done Ben?

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  #120 (permalink)
 
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 Big Mike 
Manta, Ecuador
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Jura View Post
This is a real issue, since, as you already said in another posts, it begs the question which broker is next? In other words, what if the NFA decides that verifying the data is a worthwhile undertaking and starts calling more broker's banks? Apparently, the American regulators didn't make it very hard for PFGBest and MF Global to defraud their customers - so which other brokers took advantage of the opportunity to be "creative"?

How about placing another 100 phone calls for starters, and verify the bank balances match closely the most recent "audited" report. I mean, how is it possible that didn't need to actually prove the money was there?

Mike

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