Legal dispute - unknown trade blew account

Hi FF members,

I started this thread because I couldn't see one that matched my question on legal rights. So it may be a short thread, but possibly longer. See where it goes.

So I am an EU resident and citizen (Austria). I trade infrequently perhaps a few times a year. My issue is as follows:

On 17 July 2017 a trade that I had NOT placed appeared in my account. I wasn't aware of it until 10 August as I don't check my daily statements often. But the trade was big and blew my account. When I discovered the trade on my 10 August statement it says that if a trader hasn't registered a dispute within 24 hours after the statement that ORIGINALLY contains the information about a possible erroneous trade (in other words my 17 July statement) then there are no grounds for dispute.

That disclaimer seems to kill any chance of me pursuing this mistake. But such a disclaimer appears too final - giving complete protection to the broker in the event the trader isn't meticulously following statements every single day. That level of protection doesn't even apply to a bank.

So I just wanted to check with anyone who may be knowledgeable about such disclaimers as I have no legal expertise. I'm not sure if there is an EU body that I could complain to.

thanks for any help on this.

Rough.

First off, be sure you didn't leave any pending orders; there's no point pursuing this if it turns out to be your fault. Your broker should be able to confirm if this was the case.

Not a legal expert, but agree with you that the 24 hours rule would certainly be contrary to UK consumer financial protection for eg.
So, you need to find out which country your broker is registered in, and complain to the appropriate financial body. If it's a big financial centre like Swiss or UK, you stand a chance in arbitration. If it's for eg Cyprus you will face an uphill battle as the regulators are well known to be... let's say lax but you get my drift.

If you have no success with the appropriate regulator, then there maybe EU bodies you can go to for rep, but you must have gone through the proper process first.

Gd luck

you dont need to check daily statements often, but if you trade daily/often, i cant see how you havent noticed an open trade on your account! and for a month!
the 24h rule is flexible, but not 1 month flexible to dispute if you or someone else has placed a trade on your account.
you never mentioned the size of your loss, hope it isnt large, and just swallow it that case.
a lesson for the future, may be an expensive lesson, but i am sure from this point on you will pay closer attention to your open trades, and daily statements.

triphop - thanks for the info. I've opened up an audit investigation (broker's procedure) so I'll see how that goes. I guess one question is how the trade could have been placed i.e. where from (I'm sure there were no pending trades). What's unusual is the size of the trade is several times more than what I place and the currency (eurchf) is one I never trade. I just wonder if the logs can show from what platform this was traded. That might be interesting.

profitfarmer - yes you are right a lesson for the future. I'm not a frequent trader, maybe 2-3 times a year so very long term. For that reason i never thought of daily statement checks - just once a month. And my loss by my standards was big ~3500 euros. So yes I will have to swallow it. But I will pursue it as far as I can even if the chances of success are low.

It's weird because all your previous posts from the last couple of years were about how to get money back from the FSCS compensation scheme. Maybe it's just a coincidence, a kind of bad luck series...

Good luck then.

BTW, with MT4, you only get a daily statement when there is some activity on your account, or the monthly statement. So you shoud have received when that ghost have shorted the EURCHF on July 17th below that major resistance expecting the price will bounce back like it did for the past year...but it didn't and the stupid ghost didn't want to take the loss until he blew your account... Stupid ghost, isn't he ?

yes you are right. And I am still in that process. That as you know was a result of the crash in the chf (which I wasn't trading and was doing well in). This of course is a completely different broker (chf again) so it was a big surprise and yes bad luck to go through this experience. On statements, I do get a daily one as well, no doubt, but I have my mt4 connected with another tool that the broker runs. I thought the same about the ghost..........but maybe a bit more harshly than the way you said it.