Profit and loss manipulations by online trading brokers

TL;DR

This paper investigates how technical issues in online trading platforms can be exploited as manipulative practices, significantly impacting retail traders' profits and losses, and emphasizes the need for better transparency and regulation.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of platform technical issues as a form of manipulation and provides a methodology to detect and quantify their impact on traders.

Findings

82% of retail traders face loss risk due to platform issues

Trade logs can reveal manipulation patterns

Regulatory oversight is currently insufficient

Abstract

Online trading has attracted millions of people around the world. In March 2021, it was reported there were 18 million accounts from just one broker. Historically, manipulation in financial markets is considered to be fraudulently influencing share, currency pairs or any other indices prices. This article introduces the idea that online trading platform technical issues can be considered as brokers manipulation to control traders profit and loss. More importantly it shows these technical issues are the contributing factors of the 82% risk of retail traders losing money. We identify trading platform technical issues of one of the world's leading online trading providers and calculate retail traders losses caused by these issues. To do this, we independently record each trade details using the REST API response provided by the broker. We show traders log activity files is the only way to assess any suspected profit or loss manipulation by the broker. Therefore, it is essential for any retail trader to have access to their log files. We compare our findings with broker's Trustpilot customer reviews. We illustrate how traders' profit and loss can be negatively affected by broker's platform technical issues such as not being able to close profitable trades, closing trades with delays, disappearance of trades, disappearance of profit from clients statements, profit and loss discrepancies, stop loss not being triggered, stop loss or limit order triggered too early. Although regulatory bodies try to ensure that consumers get a fair deal, these attempts are hugely insufficient in protecting retail traders. Therefore, regulatory bodies such as the FCA should take these technical issues seriously and not rely on brokers' internal investigations, because under any other circumstances, these platform manipulations would be considered as crimes and connivingly misappropriating funds.