Cyprus financial regulator CySEC has issued a clarification circular (see full text below) following numerous inquiries it received in the wake of ESMA’s plans to move forward with new, restrictive rules governing online brokers. ESMA’s new rules – finalized in late March and set (just as of last week) to come into effect in two stages in July and August – limit leverage on CFD and Forex trading to 30x for major FX pairs and less on non-majors, commodities, indices, share CFDs and cryptocurrencies (just 2x). The rules also ban Binary Options altogether, mandate margin close and negative balance protection, ban all ... (full story)