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As a former Series 7 broker and Managed Futures broker, I just wanted to confirm what an earlier post said. The SIPC is only for stocks, not for futures. The SIPC has nothing to do with futures at all and does not insure our futures accounts. So, I only keep a minimum in my futures trading account at all times to cover the margins needed, plus some extra cushion, but not too much. Now, if someone has an account trading stocks, that is a different matter. The SIPC does insure it.
After MF Global, the regulators have been talking about setting up some kind of fund like the SIPC for futures, but it has not been done yet. So, that does not help now. I am very sorry for those dealing with this stress.
Yes, you are very righ Madlyfe, it does not solve the problem at all. Unfortunately with the existing setup of regulations and lack of insurance, all we have is ourselves. There is no fund to protect us so we have to take protective measures for ourselves if we are going to trade futures. We can't rely on what our broker says about their financial stability.
So, I only have the amount of money in my futures account that I can afford to lose without stress because of this.
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Who are the PFG Victims?
A victim of this whole PFG mess is certainly Woodie's CCI Room, the proud inventor and leaser of Woodie Bars, better known as Median Renko bars. The room was sponsored by PFG and the majority of the members that ever crossed path with Woodie's room had accounts with PFG, including all the cheer leading moderators that praised PFG non-stop. I can only guess that this room was responsible for signing up many hundreds of members with PFG (although maybe for a short time before they blew their accounts).
Will see if the room is attended by members tomorrow. The sad thing is many of the members donated to MAWF, which was a charity of choice for PFG, now I wonder about that too.
Poor guy, how many times can you go broke trading for 37 years and still survive. Got to give it to him.
Last edited by aligator; July 10th, 2012 at 12:05 AM.
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So if you have futures with a broker that goes bust your margin becomes zero?
If you have cash in a futures account that goes bust your cash is not protected?
Why would they allow customers to liquidate positions then? That doesn't make sense...
"Successful trading is one long journey, not a destination" Peter Borish Former Head of Research for Paul Tudor Jones speaking on conversations with John F. Carter
Indeed, I observed a large number of people in Woodie's CCI Room when I was checking it out a couple of years back. Most of the discussion was on futures so there will be a significant number of people who will be taking a huge financial hit. I met one of the moderators, who also held local meetings to discuss Woodie's method with other individual traders. At the time he had lost his job and had been unable to find another one given this economy. If he got caught by this, he will be in a world of hurt.
"Successful trading is one long journey, not a destination" Peter Borish Former Head of Research for Paul Tudor Jones speaking on conversations with John F. Carter
The following user says Thank You to GridKing for this post:
Maint margin for open positions is not held at the brokerage. If you have open positions, then the money is not in "excess margin". If you close positions, the money is moved back to the FCM. So liquidating positions bring cash back. Initiating positions moves money from excess capital ( which PFG does not have )
My understanding is that you can liquidate any existing positions but cannot open any new positions. Likewise the accounts are frozen until they can be transferred to another broker. Hopefully, the regulators can figure out what happened and who owns what so that people can get access to their money relatively quickly.
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@ddnut,
I know who you mean, a character from Clint Eastwood Movie, without naming anyone. He actually blown his account trading CCI with no price bars (Who needs those stinking candlesticks?) perhaps more than once. Then he switched to a PFG Forex pool account. I assume that one was also blown in a pool of money auto trading WCCI (what a joke!). Woodie refused to talk about that Forex thing.
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dont believe anything you hear and only half of what you see 
