As a retail investor, you need to become client of some registered broking entity offering Spot Forex Trading. Majority of the entities offering Forex trading facilities to their clients are either registered with National Futures Association, and CFTC in USA, FSA in UK, or other applicable regulatory/self regulatory bodies.

Beware of such entities that are not regulated by any federal agency- they mostly are fly-by-night kind of companies. You interest is best protected with regulated entities.

Having said that, the regulations governing Spot Forex Trading are generally not excessive or rigid.

The above regulated entities usually tie up with some reputed financial services firms to expand their business across physical boundaries. These tie ups enable them to service their clients in a cost-effective and timely manner.

Almost all the broker-dealers have some minimum criteria specified under the applicable regulations that an applicant needs to fulfill before he/she is allowed to become a full fledged client. These criteria may be related to the applicant’s previous trading experience, net worth, risk capital, education, etc.

An approved client is allowed to trade only after he/she remits the minimum margin amount required to make the account active. These minimum amounts should not be confused with minimum deposits- most of the market players offer “Zero- minimum balance” accounts. Whatever you remit, is all tradable, i.e. you can use all the transferred moneys to place trades.

Our federal regulator, RBI, has allowed an individual to remit up-to USD 25000 per calendar year towards such permissible off-shore investments/transactions. So, in effect, the most that an Indian client can remit per calendar year is USD 25000. You are allowed to remit this money only through an Authorised Dealer, in this case, a Bank with whom you have held an account for the last 1 year. There is no restriction on the number of installments over which this USD 25000 limit is exhausted. These remittances are not netted against the amount brought back from off-shores. So, if you remit USD 25000, and bring back USD 10,000 that doesn’t mean you may remit USD 15000 (USD 25000 – USD 10,000) again within the same calendar year!