Too old for trading

We all know that approaches to investors protection in Japan and Europe are absolutely different. European brokers pay a lot of attention to the professional skills of their clients, the other aspects like age, gender remains untouched. While European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) banned certain products and imposed restriction on leverage, the Japanese government has focused on the needs and profiles of investors.

One of Japanese online trading platforms (GMO Click Securities) has outlined its “Age Policy”. In accordance with this policy all people that are 81 years old or more may not trade in Forex and options.

That is a highly sensitive topic, especially for Japan, where the current situation of aging population is a critical problem for the government authorities and where financial culture is at a high level. We all have repeatedly faced different prohibitions and restrictions regarding the minimum age requirement to open an account with any financial services company, including a Forex brokerage, hardly anyone dares to discuss the upper age restriction when it comes to trading or investment. The are a lot of factors which contributed to this silence: (i) desire to be politically correct, (ii) fear of being accused of discrimination, (iii) lack of general information regarding the investment plans of older people.

There can be a lot of different reasons for imposing such age restrictions. One of the most possible is that older people are more likely to become victims of scams and other online frauds. Japanese Financial Services Agency (FSA) received 197 reports of investment frauds during the first quarter of 2017, at the same time most of the complaints come from elderly people. Approximately 21% of complaints came from people aged 70 years, while 20% fell on people aged 60 years, and 10% of these complaints were received from people in their 80s.

As you can see, there are a lot of different methods in relation to legal regulation of trading and related activities. Stay with us to be on the top of the latest forex trends.