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RISK DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
THE RISK OF LOSS IN TRADING COMMODITIES CAN BE SUBSTANTIAL. YOU SHOULD THEREFORE CAREFULLY CONSIDER WHETHER SUCH TRADING IS SUITABLE FOR YOU IN LIGHT OF YOUR FINANCIAL CONDITION. IN CONSIDERING WHETHER TO TRADE OR TO AUTHORIZE SOMEONE ELSE TO TRADE FOR YOU, YOU SHOULD BE AWARE OF THE FOLLOWING:
IF YOU PURCHASE A COMMODITY OPTION, YOU MAY SUSTAIN A TOTAL LOSS OF THE PREMIUM AND OF ALL TRANSACTION COSTS.
IF YOU PURCHASE OR SELL A COMMODITY FUTURE OR SELL A COMMODITY OPTION YOU MAY SUSTAIN A TOTAL LOSS OF THE INITIAL MARGIN FUNDS AND ANY ADDITIONAL FUNDS THAT YOU DEPOSIT WITH YOUR BROKER TO ESTABLISH OR MAINTAIN YOUR POSITION. IF THE MARKET MOVES AGAINST YOUR POSITION, YOU MAY BE CALLED UPON BY YOUR BROKER TO DEPOSIT A SUBSTANTIAL AMOUNT OF ADDITIONAL MARGIN FUNDS, ON SHORT NOTICE, IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN YOUR POSITION. IF YOU DO NOT PROVIDE THE REQUIRED FUNDS WITHIN THE PRESCRIBED TIME, YOUR POSITION MAY BE LIQUIDATED AT A LOSS, AND YOU WILL BE LIABLE FOR ANY RESULTING DEFICIT IN YOUR ACCOUNT.
UNDER CERTAIN MARKET CONDITIONS, YOU MAY FIND IT DIFFICULT OR IMPOSSIBLE TO LIQUIDATE A POSITION. THIS CAN OCCUR FOR EXAMPLE WHEN THE MARKET MAKES A "LIMIT MOVE."
THE PLACEMENT OF CONTINGENT ORDERS BY YOU OR YOUR TRADING ADVISOR, SUCH AS A "STOP-LOSS' OR "STOP-LIMIT' ORDER, WILL NOT NECESSARILY LIMIT YOUR LOSSES TO THE INTENDED AMOUNTS, SINCE MARKET CONDITIONS MAY MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO EXECUTE SUCH ORDERS.
A "SPREAD" POSITION MAY NOT BE LESS RISKY THAN A SIMPLE "LONG" OR "SHORT" POSITION.
THE HIGH DEGREE OF LEVERAGE THAT IS OFTEN OBTAINABLE IN COMMODITY TRADING CAN WORK AGAINST YOU AS WELL AS FOR YOU. THE USE OF LEVERAGE CAN LEAD TO LARGE LOSSES AS WELL AS GAINS.
IN SOME CASES, MANAGED COMMODITY ACCOUNTS ARE SUBJECT TO SUBSTANTIAL CHARGES FOR MANAGEMENT AND ADVISORY FEES. IT MAY BE NECESSARY OF THOSE ACCOUNTS THAT ARE SUBJECT TO THESE CHARGES TO MAKE SUBSTANTIAL TRADING PROFITS TO AVOID DEPLETION OR EXHAUSTION OF THEIR ASSETS. THIS DISCLOSURE DOCUMENT CONTAINS STARTING ON PAGE 11 A COMPLETE DESCRIPTION OF EACH FEE TO BE CHARGED TO YOUR ACCOUNT BY THE COMMODITY TRADING ADVISOR.
THIS BRIEF STATEMENT CANNOT DISCLOSE ALL OF THE RISKS AND OTHER SIGNIFICANT ASPECTS OF THE COMMODITY MARKETS. YOU SHOULD THEREFORE CAREFULLY STUDY THIS DISCLOSURE DOCUMENT AND COMMODITY TRADING BEFORE YOU TRADE INCLUDING THE DESCRIPTION OF THE PRINCIPAL RISK FACTORS OF THIS INVESTMENT STARTING ON PAGE 6.
THIS COMMODITY TRADING ADVISOR IS PROHIBITED BY LAW FROM ACCEPTING FUNDS IN THE TRADING ADVISOR'S NAME FROM A CLIENT FOR TRADING COMMODITY INTERESTS. YOU MUST PLACE ALL FUNDS FOR TRADING IN THIS TRADING PROGRAM DIRECTLY WITH A FUTURES COMMISSION MERCHANT.
YOU SHOULD ALSO BE AWARE THAT THIS COMMODITY TRADING ADVISOR MAY ENGAGE IN TRADING FOREIGN FUTURES OR OPTIONS CONTRACTS. TRANSACTIONS ON MARKETS LOCATED OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES, INCLUDING MARKETS FORMALLY LINKED TO A UNITED STATES MARKET MAY BE SUBJECT TO REGULATIONS WHICH OFFER DIFFERENT OR DIMINISHED PROTECTION. FURTHER, UNITED STATES REGULATORY AUTHORITIES MAY BE UNABLE TO COMPEL THE ENFORCEMENT OF THE RULES OF REGULATORY AUTHORITIES OR MARKETS IN NON-UNITED STATES JURISDICTIONS WHERE YOUR TRANSACTIONS MAY BE EFFECTED. BEFORE YOU TRADE YOU SHOULD INQUIRE ABOUT ANY RULES RELEVANT TO YOUR PARTICULAR CONTEMPLATED TRANSACTIONS AND ASK THE FIRM WITH WHICH YOU INTEND TO TRADE FOR DETAILS ABOUT THE TYPES OF REDRESS AVAILABLE IN BOTH YOUR LOCAL AND OTHER RELEVANT JURISDICTIONS.
FUTURES COMMISSION MERCHANT AND INTRODUCING BROKER
The client is free to use the Futures Commission Merchant (FCM) and Introducing Broker (IB) of their choice. However, in order to ease the process of execution, Global Currency Advisors, Inc. Trading may use a "give-up" arrangement in which all trades are executed through a FCM of Global Currency Advisors, Inc.'s choice and then cleared by the client's FCM. This arrangement may result in the client paying higher round-turn commission. The client generally will be provided with a statement from his FCM disclosing the amount of brokerage commissions charged to the account. Global Currency Advisors, Inc. reserves the right to reject any FCM or m requested by a client for any reason, including the belief that its execution and/or its back office service is not satisfactory or the commission or fees charged to a client are not satisfactory.
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
Proprietary Trading. In the future Global Currency Advisors, Inc. and its principals may trade commodity interests for their own accounts. At the date of this document no such proprietary accounts exist. Global Currency Advisors, Inc. and its principals will never knowingly favor a proprietary account over the account of a customer. In addition, they will never knowingly permit a proprietary account to trade ahead of a customer account or permit a proprietary account to establish a position that is the opposite of a position then being taken for a customer account. Participating customers will be permitted to inspect the proprietary trading records of Global Currency Advisors, Inc.
Trading of Accounts and Other Activities. Global Currency Advisors, Inc. proposes to manage the accounts of a number of customers and to solicit actively the accounts of individuals, institutions and pools. Certain accounts may pay more or less in fees than others and certain accounts may have significantly larger amounts committed to commodity interest trading than others. Consequently, it may be implied that Global Currency Advisors, Inc. may have a financial incentive to favor one account over another. Global Currency Advisors, Inc. intends to use the same general methods and strategies to trade all its customers' accounts. In rendering trading advice, Global Currency Advisors, Inc. will never knowingly or deliberately favor the account of any customer over the account of any other customer. However, this is not to say that all accounts will achieve the same rates of return. Depending on its position on the allocation list, an account is likely to receive a better or worse price per trade than other accounts.
Application of Speculative Position Limits. All accounts managed and controlled by Global Currency Advisors, Inc. are combined (that is, aggregated) for position limit purposes. Global Currency Advisors, Inc. believes that established position limits will not adversely affect its trading for participating customers. However, there is the possibility that from time to time the trading decisions of Global Currency Advisors, Inc. may have to be modified and positions that it holds or controls may have to be liquidated to avoid exceeding applicable position limits. If the application of position limits were to affect Global's trading decisions, it would attempt to modify its recommendations in such a way as not to affect disproportionately the performance of anyone customer account compared with that of any other account that it managed or controlled.
PRINCIPAL RISK FACTORS
In addition to the risks inherent in trading commodity interests pursuant to instructions already provided herein by Global Currency Advisors, Inc. there exist addition risk factors, including those described below, in connection with a customer participating in the Managed Account Program. Prospective customers should consider all of the risk factors described below and elsewhere in this Disclosure Document before participating in any Program. No person is authorized to give any information or to make any representation not contained in this Memorandum without the prior written consent of the Managing Member. Prospective investors are therefore cautioned to rely only on the information and representations contained in this document when evaluating a potential investment with Global Currency Advisors, Inc.
Commodity Trading is Speculative and Volatile. Commodity interest prices are highly volatile. Price movements for commodity interests are influenced by, among other things: changing supply and demand relationships; weather; agricultural, trade, fiscal, monetary, and exchange control programs and policies of governments; United States and foreign political and economic events and policies; changes in national and international interest rates and rates of inflation; currency devaluations and revaluations; and emotions of the marketplace. None of these factors can be controlled by Global Currency Advisors, Inc. and no assurance can be given that Global Currency Advisors, Inc.'s advice will result in profitable trades for a participating customer or that a customer will not incur substantial losses.
Commodity Trading is Highly Leveraged. The low margin deposits normally required in commodity interest trading (typically 2% to 15% of the value of the contract purchase or sold) permit an extremely high degree of leverage. Accordingly, a relatively small price movement in a contract may result in immediate and substantial losses to the investor. For example, if at the time of purchase 10% of the price of a futures contract is deposited as margin, a 10% decrease in the price of the contract would, if the contract is then closed out, result in a total loss of the margin deposit before any deductions for brokerage commissions. A decrease of more that 10% would result in a loss of more than the total margin deposit. Thus, like other leveraged investments, any trade may result in losses in excess of the amount invested.
When the market value of a particular open position changes to a point where the margin on deposit in a participating customer's account does not satisfy the applicable maintenance margin requirement imposed by the FCM, the customer, and not Global, will receive a margin call from the FCM. If the customer does not satisfy the margin call within a reasonable time (which may be as brief as a few hours) the FCM will close out the customer's position.
Commodity Trading May Be Illiquid. Most United States commodity exchanges limit price fluctuations in certain commodity interest prices during a single day by means of "daily price fluctuation limits" or "daily limits." The daily limit, which is set by most exchanges for all but a portion of the expiration month, imposes a floor and a ceiling on the prices at which a trade may be executed, as measured from the last trading day's close. While these limits were put in place to lessen margin exposure, they may have certain negative consequences for a customer's trading. For example, once the price of a particular contract has increased or decreased by an amount equal to the daily limit, thereby producing a "limit-up" or "limit-down" market, positions in the contract can neither be taken nor liquidated unless traders are willing to effect trades at or within the limit.
Contract prices in various commodities have occasionally moved the daily limit for several consecutive days with little or no trading. Similar occurrences could prevent Global from promptly liquidating unfavorable positions and subject a participating customer to substantial losses that could exceed the margin initially commited to such trades.
Participating Customer's FCM May Fail. Under CFTC regulations, FCM's are required to maintain customer's assets in a segregated account. If a customer's FCM fails to do so, the customer may be subject to risk of loss of funds in the event of its bankruptcy. Even if such funds are properly segregated, the customer may still be subject to a risk of a loss of his funds on deposit with the FCM should another customer of the FCM or the FCM itself fail to satisfy deficiencies in such other customer's accounts. Bankruptcy law applicable to all U.S. futures brokers requires that, in the event of the bankruptcy fo such a broker, all property held by the broker, including certain property specifically traceable to the customer, will be returned, transferred or distributed to the broker's customers only to the extent of each customer's pro-rata share of all property available for distribution to customers. If any futures broker retained by the customer were to become bankrupt, it is possible that the customer would be able to recover none or only a portion of its assets held by such futures broker.
Foreign Exchanges. Trading on exchanges outside the United States is not regulated by any United States governmental agency and may involve certain risks not applicable to trading on United States exchanges. For example, some foreign exchanges, in contrast to United States exchanges, are "principal's markets" in which performance is the responsibility only of the individual member with whom the trader has entered into a futures contract and not of an exchange or clearing corporation. Moreover, such trading may be subject to whatever regulatory provisions are applicable to transactions effected outside the United States, whether on foreign exchanges or otherwise. Trading on foreign exchanges involves the additional risks of expropriation, burdensome or confiscatory taxation, moratoriums, and investment controls or political or diplomatic events, which might adversely affect the Advisor's trading activities. Trading on foreign exchanges is also subject to the risk of changes in the exchange rate between United States Dollars and the currencies in which contracts on such exchanges are settled.
Although the CFTC is prohibited by statute from promulgating rules which govern in any respect any rule, contract term or action of any foreign commodity exchange, the CFTC has full authority to regulate the sale of foreign fixtures contracts within the United States and has adopted regulations on this matter, effective as of February 1, 1998. These regulations may restrict the clients for whom or with whom the Advisor may trade or the markets which the Advisor may trade.
THE FUTURES, FOREX AND OPTIONS MARKETS
Forex Trading. Foreign exchange trading or Forex, is the simultaneous purchase of one countries currency and sale of another. Profits or losses accrue as the rate of exchanging one currency for another fluctuate. Margin deposit requirements to deal Forex are up to the discretion of the FCM, however, typical margin requirements are 2% - 5% of the cash equivalent of each transaction. The foreign exchange market is not a formally organized exchange but an informal network of trading relationships among world participants. These participants include central banks, major commercial banks, investment banks, securities broker and dealers, pension funds, insurance companies, multinational corporations and sophisticated individuals. The Forex broker or dealer generally acts as principal in the transaction and includes their anticipated profit in the spread between the "bid" and the "asked", in the prices he quotes to the Advisor for such a contract. Foreign exchange market transactions not being of standard size are subject to individual negotiation between the parties involved.
Futures Contracts. A futures contract is an agreement, made through the facilities of an established exchange, by which the seller agrees to deliver and the buyer agrees to accept, a certain quantity of a specified grade of a commodity during a designated delivery month at a specified price. Certain futures contracts, such as those in Eurodollar time deposits or stock indices, are closed out by cash settlement of the profit or loss of an open position rather than by delivery. Speculative traders rarely expect to take delivery of any commodity under a futures contract. Rather, they hope to realize profits from fluctuations in the price of futures contracts, "offsetting" such contracts by taking an equal and opposite position in the same contract before delivery is due. A margin deposit is required to initiate both "long" and "short" futures positions. Additional margin is required if unrealized losses in open positions reduce the margin on deposit below required minimums. Unlike margin in the securities industry, which essentially constitutes a loan from a client's stockbroker, margin in futures trading acts as a deposit to give assurance to a trader's futures broker of the trader's ability to pay for any losses which may be incurred on the trader's positions.
Options Contracts. An option on a futures contract gives the purchaser of the option the right to take a position at a specified price (the "strike" or "exercise" price) in the underlying futures contract. A "call" option gives the purchaser the right to take a long position in the underlying futures contract, and the purchaser of a "put" option acquires the right to take a short position in the underlying contract. The purchase price of an option is referred to as its "premium." The seller (or "writer") of an option is obligated to take a futures position at a specified price opposite the option buyer if the option is exercised. Selling such options involves risks similar to those involved in trading fixtures contracts, in that options are speculative and highly leveraged. Specific market movements of the commodities or futures contracts underlying an option cannot accurately be predicted. The purchaser of an option is subject to the risk of losing the entire purchase price of the option. The writer of an option is subject to the risk of potentially unlimited loss in excess of the premiums received.
Regulation. Futures exchanges in the United States and the trading conducted thereon are subject to regulation under the Commodity Exchange Act, as amended (the "Act"), by the CFTC. The Advisor is registered (pending) with and subject to regulation by the CFTC as a commodity trading advisor. Registration with the CFTC is not, and must not be considered as any indication of CFTC approval. The NFA is the self-regulatory body of the United States futures industry, of which the Advisor is a (pending) member. The NFA has responsibility for processing the registrations of commodity trading advisors and their associated persons, as well as most other CFTC registered persons.
Margins. Margin is the amount of funds that must be deposited by a trader with his or her FCM to secure the obligation either to make or accept delivery under a futures or Forex contract or to make an offsetting sale or purchase. Because futures and Forex contracts are customarily bought and sold on margins which range upward from less than two percent of the purchase price of the contract, price fluctuations occurring in futures and Forex markets may create profits and losses that are greater than are customary in other forms of investment. The margin deposit required of an account will be reduced of increased daily as a consequence of fluctuations in the market price of the open contracts held for the account, and additional deposits may become necessary as a consequence of adverse market movements. Exchanges impose, and may at any time increase, minimum margin requirements, and brokers may, in their discretion, further increase the amount of margin required from any account.
The foregoing is not a complete summary of the complex and highly various futures, Forex and options markets. Each client should familiarize himself or herself with the futures, Forex and options markets, carefully read the Risk Disclosure Statement in the front of this Disclosure Document and the following description of the risks connected with futures, Forex and options trading before opening an account. |