Nobody is licensed by ESMA. Everybody is bound by it.
Your licence comes from a national regulator. The product intervention measures your retail book has to obey come from Europe. That split is why a rule can change above you and arrive on your servers without anything in the platform mentioning it.
What the European measures allow a retail client to hold.
Applied by every national regulator that adopted the measures. Your book is checked against the row that matches each symbol.
- Major currency pairs: 30:1
- Minor currencies, gold, major indices: 20:1
- Commodities other than gold, minor indices: 10:1
- Government bonds: 5:1
- Shares and other assets: 5:1
- Crypto-assets: 2:1
The table matches until it doesn't.
Government bonds cap at 5:1 in Europe. The United Kingdom permits 30:1 on the same instrument. Every currency and index row above it is identical, which is what invites the assumption that the rest matches too.
The second is subtler. The European definition of a major currency pair does not include the Australian dollar, so an AUD pair is a minor and caps at 20:1. Under ASIC it is a major at 30:1. Same symbol, two correct answers.
- Government bonds checked at the European ceiling, not the UK one
- AUD pairs treated as minor under the European definition
- Each server checked against the regulator that governs it
- A finding names the symbol, the group and the server
A European decision arrives on a national server.
The measures are set at European level and applied by the national authority that licenses you. Nothing in MT4 or MT5 knows that. A group configured correctly under the rules as they stood stays exactly as it was after the rules move, and it keeps looking correct to everyone who opens it, because the configuration did not change. Only the ceiling did.
ESMA, answered plainly.
30:1 on major currency pairs and 20:1 on minor pairs. Gold and major indices are 20:1. Other commodities and minor indices are 10:1. Government bonds and shares are both 5:1, and crypto-assets are 2:1.
No. The European definition of a major currency pair does not include the Australian dollar, so an AUD pair is a minor and caps at 20:1. Under ASIC it is a major and may carry 30:1. The same symbol, two correct answers, depending on which server it sits on.
Government bonds are 5:1 in Europe and 30:1 in the UK. Crypto is capped at 2:1 in Europe and prohibited outright for UK retail. The currency and index rows are the same.
The caps are common across the regimes that adopted the measures, so the rule set is shared. What is not shared is which server your licence covers, and that is what decides the rules a given group is measured against.
No. We read. Nothing we run can change a symbol, a group or an account, so the worst case for your environment is that we see something you would rather we had not.
Nobody is licensed by ESMA. Everybody is bound by it.
Your licence comes from a national regulator. The product intervention measures your retail book has to obey come from Europe. That split is why a rule can change above you and arrive on your servers without anything in the platform mentioning it.
What the European measures allow a retail client to hold.
These ratios are applied by every national regulator that has adopted the measures. Your book is checked against the row that matches each symbol, not against a single house-wide number.
The table matches until it doesn't.
Government bonds cap at 5:1 in Europe. The United Kingdom permits 30:1 on the same instrument. Every currency and index row above it is identical, which is exactly what invites the assumption that the rest matches too.
The second is subtler. A major currency pair is defined by a list of currencies, and the European list is not the Australian one. Under the European measures the Australian dollar is not among them, so an AUD pair is a minor and caps at 20:1. A broker holding both a European and an Australian licence has the same symbol sitting at two different ceilings, correctly.
Neither of these looks like an error in a configuration screen. They only look like errors next to the licence that governs the server.
- Government bonds checked at the European ceiling, not the UK one
- AUD pairs treated as minor under the European definition
- Each server checked against the regulator that governs it
- A finding names the symbol, the group and the server
A European decision arrives on a national server.
The measures are set at European level and applied by the national authority that licenses you. Nothing in MT4 or MT5 knows that. A group configured correctly under the rules as they stood remains exactly as it was after the rules move, and it will keep looking correct to everyone who opens it, because the configuration did not change. Only the ceiling did.
Checked against your licence
The rules are European. The licence is national. Each server is checked against the regulator that actually governs it, not against a European average.
Asset class resolved per symbol
A cap only means something once you know which class a symbol belongs to. That classification is the work, and getting it wrong is how a compliant-looking book breaches.
Timestamped from first detection
A finding records when it appeared, not when someone noticed. That is the record you want when asked how long a breach was open.
ESMA, answered plainly.
30:1 on major currency pairs and 20:1 on minor pairs. Gold and major indices are 20:1. Other commodities and minor indices are 10:1. Government bonds and shares are both 5:1, and crypto-assets are 2:1.
No. The European definition of a major currency pair does not include the Australian dollar, so an AUD pair is a minor and caps at 20:1. Under ASIC it is a major and may carry 30:1. The same symbol, two correct answers, depending on which server it sits on.
Government bonds are 5:1 in Europe and 30:1 in the UK. Crypto is capped at 2:1 in Europe and prohibited outright for UK retail. The currency and index rows are the same.
The caps are common across the regimes that adopted the measures, so the rule set is shared. What is not shared is which server your licence covers, and that is what decides the rules a given group is measured against.
No. We read. Nothing we run can change a symbol, a group or an account, so the worst case for your environment is that we see something you would rather we had not.