Forex & Trading News

The FCA cancelled XTrade's UK permission after finding the firm had marketed and sold contracts for difference to vulnerable clients who lacked the experience to understand the products. The regulator concluded the firm had failed the suitability and appropriateness tests its own rules required.

The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission fined IC Markets (EU) Ltd EUR 200,000 after finding the broker participated in activities that circumvented the initial margin protections European rules impose on CFDs sold to retail clients. The firm denies the finding and has begun legal action.

Australia's corporate regulator has cancelled the financial services licence of Trive, a contracts for difference issuer that stopped taking on new clients last year after ASIC found serious deficiencies in how it ran its business.

IronFX, one of the most heavily marketed retail forex brands of the past decade, has settled with CySEC for €100,000 over the rules governing how CFDs are sold to retail clients — under a new name, Notesco.

FOREX.com was fined $700,000 by the NFA after it responded to a trading-platform malfunction by clawing back $2.84 million from customers who had come out ahead — while returning just $35,000 to those who had lost.

Forex CT, an Australian retail forex and CFD broker, was ordered by the Federal Court to pay a $20 million penalty for a system of unconscionable conduct that pressured vulnerable clients into depositing money many could not afford to lose. Its sole director was fined $400,000 and banned for eight years.

OANDA, one of the best-known names in retail forex, was fined $500,000 by the CFTC after repeatedly falling below the minimum net capital it was required to hold — and paying itself three dividends while that restriction was in force.

eToro, one of the world's most recognisable retail trading brands, has agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle SEC charges that it operated an unregistered broker and clearing agency for crypto assets sold as securities — and will strip its US crypto menu back to just three tokens.

FXCM, once one of the largest retail forex brokers in the US, was fined $7 million and permanently forced out of the American market after the CFTC found it secretly bet against its own customers while marketing a 'No Dealing Desk' platform it claimed had no conflict of interest.

VPR Safe Financial Group, the Cyprus-licensed operator of retail forex and CFD brand Alvexo, has settled with CySEC for €50,000 over suspected compliance failures stretching across eight years — and has since handed back its European licence entirely.

A class action seeking A$948 million is advancing through Australia's Federal Court against IC Markets and its billionaire founder Andrew Budzinski. The opt-out window has closed, locking thousands of retail CFD traders into consolidated proceedings as the case moves toward trial.

Infinox Capital Limited has been fined £99,200 by the FCA after failing to submit 46,053 transaction reports over six months — a breakdown that left tens of thousands of single-stock CFD trades invisible to the regulator in its first-ever MiFIR enforcement action.