Menu
Sister Sites

Options

Bookmark Thread

First Page First Unread Last Page Last Post

Print Thread

Similar Threads

Any suggestions on choosing brokers for Canadians 0 replies

Recommended Brokers for Canadians 242 replies

Brokers for Canadians 1 reply

Why are brokers ditching Canadians? 2 replies

Attachments: Brokers for Canadians?
Exit Attachments

Brokers for Canadians?

Quoting Redbaron81
Canadians will lose access to Australian brokers?? when is this taking place and why?...Im with IC markets, will i get kicked out?
They are not saying all the Australian brokers will kick the canadians out now, but with Canada and US are pushing so hard on their regulation and limitation to those brokers, I believe its just a matter of time.

I have my EA strategy spreading onto a very long term plan, now it really sucks all of a sudden I was told that only three months will be allowed till the CLOSE ONLY mode kicks in. and then after one last month, the account will be shut down.

Ironically, the IB account will be still open and working, obviously they're still trying to use us to get more non-canadian clients, how stupid that is. I am switch all my IB clients to cashbackforex.
Whatever is happening right now has happened before and will happen again.
Have been trying on FTT for several days now, not noticing any odd things, but mainly using my EA so I have been away from computer to see all the executions.

But I did tried manually open and close postions, at the same time doing the samething on pepperstone, execution time on pepperstone (demo, not real account otherwise we are comparing apple to organge) is faster than FTT.

I am curious to find out how you guys are doing with FTT?
Whatever is happening right now has happened before and will happen again.
Obviously, there are other threads showing up quick these days. I can curiously found out that some of our Canadian fellows are already with Dukascopy
Whatever is happening right now has happened before and will happen again.
I also emailed pepperstone for an explanation for why they no longer service Canadian clients. Here is the vague response:

"Thank you for your email.
Pepperstone made the commercial decision to exit the Canadian market some time ago and has not accepted new Canadian clients since 2016. Pepperstone is now winding down its relationships with its small number of remaining clients as part of the final phase of its process.
Pepperstone does not provide legal or regulatory advice, so unfortunately we are not able to provide you with the information that you are seeking.
We apologise for the inconvenience that we've caused and wish you all the best for your future trading endeavours.
Kind regards,"

As you can see, very vague. I believe it is due to IIROC regulations specifically stating any broker offering Canadians Forex access must be IIROC regulated. Furthermore each province has their own Securities Commission - ridiculous. To obtain a license with IIROC costs money; furthermore IIROC is the only organization I am aware of that changes allowed leverage requirements often. This makes business for a broker very difficult. Pepperstone probably decided conducting business with Canadians is not worth it. This is likely the same story with many other brokers that no longer offer us Forex access.

My only worry with Duka is that they may go down this route as well, in the near future. I will ask them and attempt to find an answer if that is in the works.
Quoting MysticFX
I also emailed pepperstone for an explanation for why they no longer service Canadian clients. Here is the vague response: "Thank you for your email. Pepperstone made the commercial decision to exit the Canadian market some time ago and has not accepted new Canadian clients since 2016. Pepperstone is now winding down its relationships with its small number of remaining clients as part of the final phase of its process. Pepperstone does not provide legal or regulatory advice, so unfortunately we are not able to provide you with the information that...
I myself have tried numerous times through online chatting, the only answer I got is "yes, I do accept Canadian clients, but no corporate accounts", so small Canadian retailers are still accepted. When I asked about what is possibly coming in the future, they all said they have no idea, it's the upper management's decision.
Whatever is happening right now has happened before and will happen again.
I have talked anther friend who has been trading at Vancouver for many years. He also has an account with Dukas and didn't use it too much because of the platform. He won several trading competitions here in Canada, very decent trader. And he told me the only reason he opened up that account with Dukas is because it has been such a reputable broker for so many years.

He is currently trading at IronFX, not the best but looks like they are not booting any Canadians out yet. Might worths checking it out. I believe it's located at Cyprus.
Whatever is happening right now has happened before and will happen again.
Looks like even if FTT claiming to be 24/7, through the whole weekend, the demo server shows "not connected". Not sure if it is the case with the real account. I do all my homework including downloading all the data and analysis on weekends. This kinda sucks.
Whatever is happening right now has happened before and will happen again.
Quoting mnmnmmnnmnmn
{quote} Oanda only 50:1 correct? for Canadians.
Oanda is a market maker, so that means only one position going one way at a time per pair. So no hedging, pyramiding, etc. No, Oanda is not 50:1. It's worse than that. Canada has the worst leverage rates in the world. I'm pretty sure you can find out the rates on their site. I found them over at fxcm's site. It varies from pair to pair, and also varies depending on if you're trading in USD or CAD. It's like that for all Canadian brokers. Some pairs have leverage rates around 12:1. Exotics? Forget it. Those ones are even worse. You have to be careful when reading the fine print with Canadian brokers. They changed the definition of 1 standard lot, from 100,000 units of currency, to 10,000 units of currency. They did that so they would seem more comparable to foreign brokers. In reality, with my current broker, the deposit needed to open a 1 lot trade on the gbp/jpy is less than $500 usd. With a Canadian one, the deposit is over $10,000 usd. Now you do have the CIPF, which is the Canadian Investors Protection Fund. So your account with a Canadian broker is insured up to $250,000 CAD. The only problem is, you need to have a much larger account to be profitable. I think it's roughly 7 times the money needed with other brokers to make the same profits. So if you have a small account, it would take much longer to build it up in Canada. If you have a large account, like $80,000 or more, you can earn a living off forex with a Canadian broker.
Quoting 4xNewGuy
{quote} Oanda is a market maker, so that means only one position going one way at a time per pair. So no hedging, pyramiding, etc. No, Oanda is not 50:1. It's worse than that. Canada has the worst leverage rates in the world. I'm pretty sure you can find out the rates on their site. I found them over at fxcm's site. It varies from pair to pair, and also varies depending on if you're trading in USD or CAD. It's like that for all Canadian brokers. Some pairs have leverage rates around 12:1. Exotics? Forget it. Those ones are even worse. You have to...
Yes, beautifully explained. thank you
Profit Maker
Quoting Redbaron81
Canadians will lose access to Australian brokers?? when is this taking place and why?...Im with IC markets, will i get kicked out?
It's a messy situation in Canada. Things like forex are regulated provincially. The most frequently blocked provinces I've seen are Quebec and B.C., due to their regulations. I wanted desperately to go with IC Markets, but for some reason, they've only blocked Ontario. I really don't know why, but they have. Some brokers started out with blocking Quebec and B.C., then after a while decided to step in line with a bunch of other brokers and just blanket ban Canadian traders altogether. I've seen a lot of that happening with brokers from Cyprus lately. Regulated ones in the U.K. and U.S. have been doing it for much longer.

Foreign brokers don't have to comply with the Canadian laws. Since Canadian law is not international law, and Canada really has like zero influence on the global stage. It can't put out things like economic sanctions on nations like the U.S. can. It's just some brokers go along with provincial laws to seem legitimate, and others go beyond that and ban all Canadians to seem even more legitimate. It seems smaller brokers are more willing to take on Canadians from most provinces. Some larger ones like FXOpen have multiple branches around the world, adhering to a lot of the what's considered top regulators. Yet they'll still have one open in a loosely regulated area to allow Canadians to trade with them still. Since them getting a license in Canada too is likely not worth it, given the country's relatively small retail trader base.

So long story short, you could get kicked out. There's the potential of that happening for virtually every trader that has an offshore broker. If you do, they give you at least one month's notice before you can't trade with them anymore, and usually give at least another month after that to withdraw your funds. At least that's what it was when I got booted from xm.com. It's a damn annoying situation, but it's one we're stuck with. Your best bet is just to keep a list of brokers that accept Canadians just in case. I also look at ones that are members of financialcommission.org, since you can't always rely on national regulators to actually care about the average trader.
Thanks for your info. I myself had an XM account and got booted out a while ago. It was not fun they gave you so much credit but you can’t cash them out because you haven’t reached their commission target.

There’s not much we can do but hoping those decent brokers will be still taking us poor Canadians. There aren’t that many to start with anyways.

And I start to believe that not that many Canadians are interested in forex trading at all? That’s probably why those brokers don’t really care about loosing canadian custermers.
Whatever is happening right now has happened before and will happen again.
Quoting mnmnmmnnmnmn
Thanks for your info. I myself had an XM account and got booted out a while ago. It was not fun they gave you so much credit but you can’t cash them out because you haven’t reached their commission target. There’s not much we can do but hoping those decent brokers will be still taking us poor Canadians. There aren’t that many to start with anyways. And I start to believe that not that many Canadians are interested in forex trading at all? That’s probably why those brokers don’t really care about loosing canadian custermers.
From what I hear, Cyprus has basically put an end to the whole deposit bonus scheme. They felt it was luring in too many inexperienced traders that would lose their money quickly. So now I think most of the ones that ran bonus promotions, now do rebates instead. I know Vantage FX that's in Australia offers an interest rate based credit plan if you hit their monthly targets in terms of volume traded. I just didn't like their latency. My first broker had their servers set up in New York, so my ping was a lightning fast 12 milliseconds. XM's was around 150, which is still fine, my broker FxPig is around 100, but Vantage showed around 500 milliseconds on their demo. It said the same for the live server at the time, but they improved that now. One live server is around 45 ms, the other is around 110. I'll look into opening an account with Vantage in a year or two if they still accept Canadians. I do high volume trading, so I'd hit their monthly targets for lots traded no problem, and I'd get just shy of a 9% balance credit to my account at the end of the month.

I think some of the brokers are just being pressured by the regulators. Cyprus for decades, was known as a safe haven for very shady businesses. I'm guessing they really want to clean up their image, so they forced the regulated brokers to go along with it. Australia's been much more reliable for a long time, so I guess they don't really feel the need to play ball with the IIROC. They leave it up to the brokers, and most of them just adhere to provincial laws instead.

I'm really not too sure how many forex traders there are in Canada, but I'd assume not too many. Forex, and well, any kind of trading in general takes years to get good at. To top it all off, some of the people who offer seminars are not the greatest traders themselves. One guy in Toronto was offering seminars that were either just weekend, or one week seminars. By the end of it, he told his "students" that if they still didn't get it, then they could give him some money, and he'd trade for them. One of his students lost his $30k life's savings, because the "teacher" was a braindead idiot. I think it's because things like this pop up every now and then, that Forex kind of gets a bad reputation. It also doesn't help when brokers throw out these "free educational materials". If they were so damn educational, there would be a lot more successful traders because of it.
IC Markets takes Canadian clients, been with them for 3 years now. Can't complain, low spreads, ECN account. Cant ask for to much more then that.


edit: I have read in the other thread Ontarioians cant open accounts at IC, I feel bad for you.

Dukas would be the next option, as mentioned before.
Learn, a forex trader must, unlearn and relearn he will.
Quoting COGSx86
IC Markets takes Canadian clients, been with them for 3 years now. Can't complain, low spreads, ECN account. Cant ask for to much more then that. edit: I have read in the other thread Ontarioians cant open accounts at IC, I feel bad for you. Dukas would be the next option, as mentioned before.
Thanks COGS, for your reply.

So far I have the following on my radar:

Austrailian: Vantage & IC Markets
British: LMAX
Swiss: Dukas-FTT

Maybe I should give Vantage and ICM a try. If later on us Canadians get booted out, there are always other options.
Thanks
Whatever is happening right now has happened before and will happen again.
So I spoke to Duka and got a response from an account manager. They accept Canadian clients, and feel confident that this will not change in the near future.

Obviously anything can happen at any time, but I think this should be the way to go for us in terms of having a good and regulated broker that is not looking to drop us off soon
Quoting MysticFX
So I spoke to Duka and got a response from an account manager. They accept Canadian clients, and feel confident that this will not change in the near future. Obviously anything can happen at any time, but I think this should be the way to go for us in terms of having a good and regulated broker that is not looking to drop us off soon
That's awesome to know. I have been still demo-in their FTT platform, so far I'm feeling ok.
I'm waiting to close all my positions at Pepperstone and get ready to swich sometime next couple of months.
Whatever is happening right now has happened before and will happen again.
For those brokers like LMAX who are taking wholesale clients, I think it's pretty easy to do as well. Just need to go register yourself a numbered company, and start trading under that LTD company. And at year end file tax as the government wish. That should be also a route if really we really want.
Whatever is happening right now has happened before and will happen again.
Hi

l am from quebec and l trade since 3 years with Friedberg Direct(affiliated with FXCM Canada), no problem, they accept EA's, etc
Feel free to take a look: https://www.fxcm.com/ca/

Good luck
Quoting ben.deschain
Hi l am from quebec and l trade since 3 years with Friedberg Direct(affiliated with FXCM Canada), no problem, they accept EA's, etc Feel free to take a look: https://www.fxcm.com/ca/ Good luck
As far as I know, Friedberg is on the top list that almost everyone is trying avoid for numerous reasons.
Whatever is happening right now has happened before and will happen again.
Quoting mnmnmmnnmnmn
{quote} As far as I know, Friedberg is on the top list that almost everyone is trying avoid for numerous reasons.
Hi, i'm curious on what the reasons are for avoiding this broker? I was planning on investing more of my account with them.

The rep I work with has been very upfront with me and I have no complaints. The base commissions, spreads, and leverage are all documented. I also did checks on them before depositing, as i'm in Ontario and they have a clean bill with the OSC, and are members of IIROC and CIPF (Insured against insolvency up to 1m) and have no lodged disciplinary actions or complaints, along with being around for 15 years.

The only complaints I could find online were about the commissions, and leverage (This is IIROC regulations, and has nothing to do with the broker). Commissions seem on par for me for the low variable spread.
To be one with the market, you must first be one with yourself.
0 traders viewing now