Everything you wanted to know about copy trading (but were afraid to ask)
Following up on last week’s brief foray into the world of copy trading, this week we have a podcast with James Lawrence, the founder of Enigma Strategy. James has been in the retail trading space for a while and set up Enigma as a discretionary investment management firm.
In the podcast we look at the different types of copy trading and what could arguably be considered ‘true’ copy trading. We look at how brokers are approaching the field and what the actual logistics of offering the service are. Listen via the links below.
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Apple Podcasts
EverFX and the Georgian defence minister
Last summer I had to stop off for a couple of days in Tbilisi, en route to Yerevan. One noticeable change from my prior visit to Georgia’s capital were the large number of young Russian men hanging around in the city. I guess they must really love khachapuri?
Another thing I could have done when I was there was visit a purported hub for scam brokers. Last week the BBC released a new documentary, looking at the people behind several brands that have defrauded investors, with one of their largest offices apparently located in Georgia.
The episode was hosted by Simona Weinglass, who was partially responsible for getting binary options banned in Israel, and is focused on a company called Milton Group. It is alleged that Milton operated over 400 different scam brands. What ends up being wild is Georgia’s former defence minister, a guy called Davit Kezerashvili, is purportedly the ultimate owner of the scam companies.
Kezerashvili, along with most of the people he allegedly operates with, are dual citizens of Israel. Interestingly one of the main figures involved in the binary options trade was also a Georgian-Israeli citizen, although there are no suggestions he is connected to Kezerashvili. Incidentally, if any Georgian-Israeli alleged criminals are reading this, we are big fans of your work, our kneecaps and lezginka. We’re certain these unfounded allegations will all blow over soon.
One of the companies mentioned in the documentary is EverFX, a now defunct broker that was regulated by CySEC. The documentary doesn’t make this explicit but my guess is that EverFX was funded by the Milton Group’s allegedly illicit business in order to build a more ‘legit’ brand. Unfortunately it seems they carried on with a similar sort of business practices to their other operations, which ultimately led to EverFX shutting down.
Another point of interest is just seeing how these businesses function in more practical terms. You see so many faceless brokers set up in random offshore locations and have no idea who is actually behind them, or who is doing the legwork needed to make them function. If you watch the documentary you get to actually see what is going on behind the scenes.
Finally, and what may be of interest to some readers, is the fact that the crypto payments the scam companies used were not difficult to trace. A couple of BBC noobs were able to figure out that most of the brands were connected because all their payments ended up in the same wallets. They could also identify the final destination accounts.
Given that the FBI was already able to clawback bitcoin ransom payments over two years ago, I guess this shouldn’t be too surprising. Now I know no readers would ever dream of using crypto to bypass annoying PSPs that won’t work with them, but this is a good sign that doing so may not be the awesome fix you think it is, were you to consider doing so.
Saxo Bank launches interest on accounts
One of the things we’ve looked at since the start of the year is interest revenue at publicly-traded brokers. For instance, interest made up 5% of revenues in IG’s latest financial reports – up from 0% in the results released before that.
The question we then asked was, will a broker release a cash product on the back of this? The answer is now ‘yes’ as Saxo Bank announced last week that it would start paying customers interest on cash holdings.
The rates vary depending on the account type you hold but range from a low of 2.258% to 2.725%. Note that this is for deposits in GBP. Given that my Revolut account pays me nothing and my bank account also pays me close to nothing, this is actually pretty good going.
To my knowledge no other major provider is offering this service, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we started to see more of it in the near term. As an aside, it is already being offered by several UK companies in the retail stockbroking space.
