The Australian financial regulator ASIC continues to move closer to its European counterparts on retail traders. Until last week, Australia was the last country with strict regulation where retail traders could trade forex and CFDs with almost unlimited leverage. New rules are now in place for CFD brokers, limiting leverage to 1:30 for major forex pairs – and even lower for other instruments. Similar restrictions came into force in the UK and the EU in August 2018.
In addition, ASIC added a ban on trading binary options for retail traders. According to ASIC, Australian traders lose about AUD500 million a year from binary options brokers. The ban on binary options corresponds to what was introduced by European regulators in 2018. The ban comes into force on May 3.