Flash Crash, No Problem

If you feel like the FX marketplace is becoming increasingly untenable for retail traders you have very few options of where to go and still trade. ZeroSum offers a way for traders to still be engaged with the markets while never having to worry about a market move wiping out your account.

After SNB event in Jan 2015 retail FX became a dangerous place. The most recent flash crash last Friday has made that abundantly clear once again. I think it’s going to be very painful for a lot of retail traders in the coming weeks as the dust settles and brokers start closing accounts. Some large name brokerages might close, others consolidate but all will certainly try to avoid being caught out for a third time.

As an example if you had a modest $2,000 account and used the available leverage (almost universally 50 to 1 in the US) on long GBP/USD, your account would have been underwater give or take around $4,000 in a matter of minutes. Once the liquidity providers got out, your stops wouldn’t have helped you. You are at the will of your broker and most likely they are going to fill you massively off market (go ahead and re-read those terms of service you agreed to).

ZeroSum’s competitions are structured to allow traders to have full access to real time data and trading capabilities. Long GBP/USD in a competition last Friday? Don’t sweat it, you only pay an entry fee once and you are never liable for trading performance losses during a competition. Why? Because ZeroSum’s competitions are against other traders and not the market. In fact, one advantage of ZeroSum’s trading competitions is the very essence that you are competing relative to your peers and can focus on real market events not artificially induced flash crashes stopping you out.

Trade the markets, not your broker’s terms of service.