opes demise exposes regulators, page-21

Ipod...

Yes, "devastating" seems such an inadequate word for what he would be facing.

But...what is a 67 year old doing with 100% of his assets in the share market...no less, speculative stocks such as those typically the attraction of Opes Prime clients?

I am 100% investment at the moment, but still have other assets...I also have no borrowings of any kind!

If I lost the lot in my shares, I too would be devastated...clearly...but am both young enough and I like to think diversified enough to come back from such a terminal event...yet I am not anywhere near his age.

Up til about Nevember I was heavily using a CFD account in parallel to my normal trading practices...just to feel the water as it were.

At one stage I was trading Fosters, moving millions in and out with great success...got the shock of my life when faced with a brokerage bill for $60k or so for a single day of trading!

Make a packet that day...but ended up giving more than half back to the broker.

Several other experiences were not very nice, such as being flushed several times from less liquid stocks as I was clearly targeted...also getting almost instantaneous margin calls when I was being flushed...and often not at all then it appeared a genuine sell-down was underway.

In short, the provider of the CFD was working my account against me.

lol...hard enough to make a decent trade without such trades actually being worked over to your detriment by the provider...they get to clean you up and charge you for the trouble.

Anyway, it soon became clear that CFD's worked best on medium to long term plays in only the most liquid stocks...where the funds had full control and could limit moves to drag out your rate of return.

Suffice to say I stopped using the CFD account to go long...although I do still use it from time to time for shorting the obvious death spirals.

The point of what I am saying is that such facilities are never all they are cracked up to be...just as the Opes Prime spec stock lending was equally not.

I do feel sorry for this guy though...and of course virtually every other investor effectively draged into the gutter by what really only amounts to a handful of greedy traders.

Cheers!