Safety of Funds

Vision Financial Markets – Our Futures Commision Merchant (FCM)

Vision Financial Markets LLC (formerly Vision Limited Partnership) was formed in January 1988 and is a privately held company. Vision was registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as a Futures Commission Merchant (FCM) in 1990.  Vision has grown and expanded over the past 20 years to become one of the largest providers of Introducing Broker services in America. Vision is a member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and Commodity Exchange (COMEX), the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and the National Futures Association (NFA). Vision is a self-clearing member of all four CME Group exchanges and less than 40 organizations in the world have this distinction.

Vision is also a self-clearing securities broker/dealer registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and holds memberships with the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) and the International Securities Exchange (ISE). Vision is also a member of the Options Clearing Corporation, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and Security Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). Having full clearing capabilities on both the securities side and futures side in the U.S. markets puts Vision in some very elite company as there are less than twenty such entities in the world that have the same breadth of capabilities. Vision's offices are located in New York, Chicago and Stamford, CT.

Vision's designated self-regulatory organizations are the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for futures business and the Chicago Board Options Exchange for their securities business. They are also audited by an independent auditor. Vision follows sound, conservative business practices to make sure they remain the trustworthy and reliable business partner their customers want and deserve. Vision's owners have a great deal of their personal assets invested in Vision's capital. Vision does not use its capital for aggressive proprietary trading or risky investments. The majority of their capital has always been invested conservatively in U.S. Treasuries and AA/AAA rated short-term securities.

CME Clearing (Excerpt From the CME's Website)

The Best Risk Management Starts with Security

In today’s market environment, effective risk management is a business imperative. At CME Group, we believe our financial safeguards system, designed for the benefit and protection of both clearing members and their customers, is second to none.

Our centralized clearing capability and comprehensive set of risk management services provide the security, transparency and confidence our market participants need to operate, invest and grow.

• Central counterparty guarantee. Credit risk is virtually eliminated as CME Clearing becomes the buyer to every seller and the seller to every buyer. We guarantee the financial soundness of all trades completed on our exchanges, processing more than 2 billion trades a year, as illustrated below.
• $7 billion in safety and soundness. In more than 100 years of trading, we have never had a default or a loss of customer funds resulting from failure of a clearing firm. We also offer you the assurance of $7 billion ready to help us contain systemic risk, including $800 million from a secured liquidity facility.
• Segregation of customer funds. Regulations require clearing firms to separately account for and segregate customers’ positions and monies from their own (requirements that extend to CME Clearing). If your clearing firm becomes financially unstable or insolvent due to a financial issue that does not involve the customer account, your funds, held in the customer segregated account, are not subject to its creditor claims and you can transfer your funds to another clearing firm, if you choose.

Additionally, CME Group’s Audit department routinely inspects the books and records of clearing members to ensure compliance with these regulations.

• Performance bond requirements. Each of our customers is required to put up a "good faith deposit,” or performance bond, to cover the maximum likely loss a position could suffer between each mark-to-market cycle. In turn, our clearing member firms must post to CME Clearing at least the maintenance performance bonds for all positions carried. Performance bonds are calculated by our Standard Portfolio Analysis of Risk (SPAN) system that today is used by over 50 exchanges and clearing organizations around the world, making it the global standard for portfolio margining.
• Twice daily mark-to-market process. Accumulation of debts/losses is limited and transparency is achieved as CME Clearing marks your positions to market twice daily, once in the morning and again in the late afternoon, so you always know where you and your customers stand.
• 24-hour monitoring by an experienced risk-management team. Over 120 employees on the CME Clearing and Audits Risk staff use a variety of sophisticated tools to carefully observe risk 24 hours a day, six days a week. These teams work closely with Products and Services, Market Regulation, Legal and other divisions across the exchange as well as our clearing members to help clients manage risk during periods of unprecedented growth and at times of economic uncertainty.

For More Information

For questions related to our Financial Safeguards, please contact CME Clearing at 312-930-3170.

Additional resources on Clearing section of cmegroup.com

• Get a comprehensive look at how we serve the risk-management needs of customers around the world in our Financial Safeguards brochure
• Access current performance bond requirements, list of clearing member firms, clearing member requirements and more

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TRADING FUTURES AND OPTIONS INVOLVES SUBSTANTIAL RISK OF LOSS AND IS NOT SUITABLE FOR ALL INVESTORS.  PAST PERFORMANCE IS NOT NECESSARILY INDICATIVE OF FUTURE RESULTS.