QDZ, if he only made this point once, would be doing everyone a service with regards to making people cautionary...It is true that some smaller Introducing Brokers have been known to fleece their customers...There are a few reports on this with the CFTC website and/or NFA...But, when this becomes the sole obsession of one person, it goes into the land of paranoid...Clearly, the CFTC has taken some steps towards full disclosure, requiring that these FCM's disclose their financials every quarter...This can be of great assistance if one hears about a firm offering lower commissions, but then sees that this firm has about 0 in client funding...
There are a number of ways to protect oneself, especially if one does not like the fact that futures accounts do not carry this SIPC insurance...One way is to simply keep the minimum cash balance required for the margin requirements intra-day...This way, you basically know, if the remote chance of some smaller firm goes under, what your maximum exposure would be...Otherwise, obsessing about this non-stop is really a great way to develop a bleeding ulcer...
