Not upheld: Other regulated complaint complaint against CMC Markets UK plc

Decision detail

Summary

Mrs S complained that CMC Markets incorrectly closed her CFD trading positions on 26 November 2011, causing financial loss. She claimed she did not close a short position of 100 units that triggered the liquidation and believed it was a platform error. CMC Markets provided internal logs showing Mrs S was logged in and had clicked the 'X' button to close the trade herself, and that the automatic closeout was correctly executed due to insufficient margin. The ombudsman found the technical evidence persuasively demonstrated Mrs S closed the trade, and that the subsequent automatic liquidation was a legally required process that CMC Markets executed fairly and reasonably. The complaint was not upheld.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman found that internal logs persuasively demonstrated Mrs S closed the trade herself by clicking the 'X' button on her phone, not CMC Markets. The evidence showed a different source channel would appear if CMC Markets had closed the trade. Once the trade was executed, the margin requirement increased substantially, immediately triggering the automatic closeout mechanism which CMC Markets was legally required to execute. The ombudsman accepted Mrs S's testimony was insufficient to outweigh the technical evidence provided by CMC Markets.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website