I am caught up in this. I still have substantial funds in the account even though I have moved ~90% out last week.
It was pure luck that on Tuesday night I saw the MF share price plummet, read through their announcements and decided to reduce my exposure. I moved ~40% of the idle funds out on Wed. At that stage no one was talking bankruptcy so I only did what was precautionary.
By Wednesday night's session the news were getting worse and I got more worried, and decided to close what I can the following day and get out what I can. Luck would have it that ASX had a fcuking glitch that day... so I wasn't able to close everything until late afternoon. I made the withdrawal request and the money didn't arrive in my bank account until late Friday night. It was a nerve wracking wait.
And through shear bad luck I had margin tied up in a large capital raising position that couldn't be closed out and couldn't be withdrawn... I only do this kind of trades once a blue moon and for this to be tied up just in the wrong time
Now I need to wait for the outcome of the recovery process.
No doubt the mainstream media will have another round of CFD bashing. But this collapse has nothing to do with CFDs. MFG collapsed because of their European debt exposure. And their exposure hasn't even gone bad yet (most debt matures Dec 2012 and is possible that they would get 100c in the dollar thanks to the ESEF) - but with rating downgrade, increasing collateral requirement, lack of trust and everything else, this death spiral played out within a week. And the declining trust from clients means that there were no buyers for even their low risk business units like traditional broking and clearing.
With MFGA CFDs and futures, client moneies are co-mingled in segrgated accounts and there will be deficiencies especially with markets moving today. But I am catiously optimistic that clients should receive the majority of their money back. Both the HKSE and SGX announced yesterday that MFG were still posting up adequate margin for their positions on those exchanges. Given that Comsec, Westpac and ANZ all use MFGA for their CFDs I hope that means the Australian subsidary is also doing the right thing wrt all the monies.
I am a little shaken by this despite getting most of the money out, and it will be a stressful period waiting for a resolution on the monies still in there. I will probably take some time off to rethink my risk management on who I trust my money with. But the decision to use MFG because it is a listed entity saved my bacon this time, and it will be of the highest priority if I was to trade CFDs again.
Good luck to all account holders and also to the people at MFGA. They have given me good service and they are caught up in this through no fault of their own.