Chinese investors who allegedly lost $2.6 million in forex trading have occupied the Shanghai office of Australian forex brokerage Union Standard Group Forex (USGFX) and are holding several staff members hostage. Wednesday up to 50 investors went into the company office demanding their money back. Initially the angry clients, who reportedly are unarmed, took hostage 20 employees of USGFX, but eventually released the majority. Three USGFX staff members, however, were still being held hostage.
I thought Chinese forex traders are pretty knowledgeable nowadays about market makers and what they do in forex trading and what can happen if you trade with them especially after they got majorly burned by IronFX, this Cyprus-based forex bucketshop. HOW could this happen again? Well suits them right for those market maker brokers for conning people of their hard-earned money all those years.
From the article: "Chinese investors have a penchant for get-rich-fast schemes and get very upset when it does not work, often fighting back and taking matters into their own hands." Jesus, there guys are something else. I bet that everyone in Australia would be very happy if all the Chinese people packed up and left because of what has been done to the local real estate markets. I really understand how dumb these Chinese people can be though. Even if they manage to get the company to say, under duress, that they will get all their money back, do they really not expect to be prosecuted for this crime? It really doesn't matter now how this turns out financially, those hostage takers should be looking at jail time.
Update here: http://www.financemagnates.com/forex/brokers/shanghai-usgfx-staff-members-held-hostage-released/ quote: 'USGFX further stated that the investors had used a third-party agent in order to trade forex on the company’s platform: “Apparently the traders in question were heavily shorting the AUD/USD above 0.7600 and continued adding multiple short positions until their accounts were exhausted. It has come to light that an introducing broker was trading on behalf of their clients on the USGFX MT4 platform when the losses occurred and he has conveniently shifted the blame to the company for the outcome – for the trading that he did himself and the company had no part in.” Company statement notwithstanding, the clients blame USGFX for their hefty losses and it is from that firm that they want compensation.'
Shame the update doesn't say anything about what happened to the hostage takers. The financial stuff can be dealt with later and can be sorted out in court, but conduct like this cannot be forgiven. I'm confused now because this article states that it was an office in Shanghai, but the original article... oh wait, just read it again, it was always an office in Shanghai. Well, never mind about what I said with regards to rules and laws when I thought this happened in Australia. Its China for god sakes, and anything can happen depending on which way the political party leans. I remember a while back reading about how all the citizens are investing in some government regulated index type investments. All the common folk say they just buy and buy because they know the government will always protect their losses, that they won't let it go down, so its a zero risk trade. This can't end well.
%% I was thinking about this all last week; because IBD {Investors Business Daily noted ''when an elephant gets in a bathtub, anyone can see that ''[ if they know patterns] I checked the charts for capital city /china with NSW[ Australia] Its complex, because i would not blame anyone for wanting to live in NSW rather than capital city/china. The tax[tariff] for foreigners, NSW real estate is only about 10% more[NSW]. The way TN handles non resident aliens[ not a insult ;its a legal term]. For a fish license its about 90% more[ $11 TN county resident $99 non resident license. So that%% or more could stop all or most of them but not sure the Aussie sellers would want that ??
This does NOT make sense. Introducing brokers usually do NOT have authority to place trades on the investors' behalf. They are the people through which you open up accounts usually with lower commission and/or lower start-up capital but ultimately the trading capital resides with the brokerage company in this case USGFX and it's USGFX that you as investors deal with. So if there is any money that's lost, it is due to trading with USGFX which according to how they describe their product/service offering is a typical market maker that trade against their clients and profit only at the expense of the clients so it's not that surprising that all those investors who traded with USGFX all lost their money. Those investors did go after the right people; it IS USGFX that was responsible. USGFX is just trying push the blame off them and hopefully redirect their clients towards the introducing brokers. I am just surprised that they haven't learned better after getting burned by IronFX and would still choose to trade with a market maker bucket shop. What happened with IronFX was pretty big, don't think the government censored any of it.
Chinese investors/traders are not very sophisticated or experienced so not surprise they are the one putting $ into someone else's pockets. If USGFX goes away there will be others going in to fill their shoes, the money is just too good to ignore.