Trading on PU Prime: the plain-English version

Six things that decide everything (read these even if you read nothing else)

1. PU Prime is a real company, not a fake website. Big, running since 2015, and plenty of people withdraw their money fine.[3]
2. But no UK regulator supervises it. So there is nobody here to complain to, and no UK compensation fund if it fails.[1]
3. You may not know which company you signed up with — and that single fact decides whether you have any protection at all (§3).[10][11]
4. Your £300 can control £300,000 of trades. At 1:1000 an 8-pip move the wrong way takes 80% of the account (§4).[6]
5. The contract lets them cancel your profits if they decide you traded “suspiciously” — including trading the same signals as your mates (§5).[10]
6. Someone gets paid every time you trade, win or lose. That’s how the signal chain makes its money (§7).[12][17]

The words you need

Word	Plain English
CFD	A bet on a price moving, without owning the thing. It’s what PU Prime sells.
Leverage	Trading with borrowed size. 1:1000 = £1 controls £1,000 of trade.
Margin	The money you must keep in the account to hold a trade open.
Spread	The gap between the buy price and sell price. It’s the firm’s fee, charged on every trade.
Pip	The unit a currency price moves in. On EUR/USD, 1 pip is the 4th decimal place.
Stop-out	When the platform closes your trade for you because your money ran out.
Counterparty	Whoever is on the other side of your bet. Here it’s the firm itself.
Regulator	The government body that licenses a firm and can act if it mistreats you. In the UK that’s the FCA.
CGT	Capital Gains Tax — tax on investment profits. Spread-betting wins are exempt; CFD profits are not.
FSCS	The UK scheme that repays you (up to £85,000) if an authorised firm goes bust.[23]

1. What you are actually doing on PU Prime

Two facts, neither obvious, and both from their own contract.[10]

You are betting against the firm, not with it. The client agreement names PU Prime as the Long or Short Party to every trade — the other side of the bet. If you win, the house book loses. It still fills your orders, and most people do get their money out, but “the house takes the other side of your bet” is the honest description, and it is nothing like owning shares.[3][13]

Your balance isn’t held the way a bank balance is. The agreement says your money can sit in the same account as other clients’ money. PU Prime keeps any interest it earns. And it can use that shared pool to settle its own dealings elsewhere. It goes further: a deposit “is not ‘client money’” but has “purchased” an obligation from the firm. If the firm fails, you are an unsecured creditor in a queue — in a country where you have no practical way to sue.[10]

2. Why adults keep asking about “regulation”

Forget the gold-star idea. A regulator does two practical jobs:[1][20]

1. it makes the firm follow rules that stop the worst behaviour; and
2. it gives you somewhere to go — a free complaints body that can force the firm to pay you.

So “is it regulated?” really means: what rules bind them, and who do I call when it breaks? Here is that question answered for you.

What you’d get with a UK-authorised firm	What you get on PU Prime
Leverage capped at 30:1 (FX), 20:1 indices, 5:1 shares — by law[20]	Up to 1:1000 on every account type[6]
Negative balance protection: you can never lose more than you put in[20]	Their contract says you “can lose more than your invested capital, and you may be required to make further payments”[10]
Trading incentives banned (no deposit bonuses)[20]	Deposit bonuses and promotions are the marketing[5]
They must publish the % of clients who lose money	Nothing published — no loss figure anywhere[6][14]
If the firm collapses: FSCS up to £85,000[23]	A private panel capped at €20,000, which does not cover trading losses[7][8]
Broker-bought insurance isn’t part of the scheme	Advertises insurance “up to US$1,000,000” per client — but it pays only if the firm becomes insolvent, and the certificate on their site names a different company to the one you may be with[9]
Complaint: free Financial Ombudsman, and the firm is bound[1]	A private dispute body (you have to go through them, and pay attention to the cap)[7][8]
If they mistreat you: the FCA can act	The FCA warns about them and cannot help you[1][15]

The regulator's own sentence about a UK customer

“This firm is not authorised by us and may be targeting people in the UK… you won’t have access to the Financial Ombudsman Service… it’s unlikely you’d get your money back if the firm goes out of business.”[1] That warning was first published in May 2023 and was updated on 20 April 2026 — it is current, not a spent historic notice.[1] Denmark’s regulator and Canada’s have warned about the same group.[15][3]

3. Which company did you actually sign up with?

The emails are signed with a list of eight companies — Seychelles, Mauritius, South Africa, Australia, UAE, St Vincent, Cyprus — introduced as “PU Prime is a trading name for multiple entities”. Not one is named as yours.[10][11] So you don’t currently know which company holds your money — and that is the most useful thing to find out.

Those eight licences are not equivalent. Australia’s ASIC is strict and real. St Vincent is not: the agreement itself says its regulator “does not regulate, monitor, supervise or license margin FX and contract for difference issuers”. The contract is judged in St Vincent courts.[10] Cyprus is another category again — that company is only a payment agent, so it can take your money without being the firm you traded with.[11]

That’s why no signed client agreement ever turned up, and it’s normal for them. The contract is formed “by taking any action consistent with your agreement to these terms”. The terms themselves are “subject to change from time to time at our discretion… all changes will be binding on you upon their effective date”.[10] So what binds you is whatever their website says on the day they use it against you. Download and date-stamp their legal documents page today, and keep it.

Finding out takes about two minutes — look for these, in this order

1. The bank details on the deposit page / funding email — the account holder’s legal name. This is the one that settles it.
2. The MT4/MT5 server name in the welcome email — it usually gives the jurisdiction away.
3. Logged in: the “Legal” / “Documents” area — the agreement that applies to your account.
4. Your bank statement — who actually took the money (watch for the Cyprus payment agent).

If none of them says, ask support in writing: “Please confirm the legal entity my account is contracted with, and send the executed Client Service Agreement.” Keep the reply — it becomes evidence.

4. Leverage: the numbers that decide whether you survive

Leverage is not “more profit”. It is a dial that decides how big a mistake you can survive. PU Prime offers up to 1:1000 on every account, with the margin call at 50% and the stop-out at 20%.[6]

Leverage	Trade size on a £1,000 balance	Move that takes 80% of it
1:1000 (PU Prime)	£1,000,000	8 pips
1:500	£500,000	16 pips
1:30 (the UK legal cap)	£30,000	267 pips
1:5	£5,000	1,600 pips

Eight pips is nothing — it happens while you’re making a cup of tea. And spread is charged on every trade, whatever the result. On the Standard account (from 1.3 pips), one round trip at 0.1 lots costs $1.30. On a £1,000 account that’s 0.13% per trade — about 5.5% a month, ~65% a year in fees alone, before a single losing trade.[6] At your size it’s starker. That same habit at 0.01 lots costs about 17% of a £300 account a year. At 0.1 lots it costs 167% — more than the whole account, paid in fees.

Now the size that doesn’t end your account. The smallest trade is 0.01 lots, worth about $0.10 a pip, so a 100-pip stop is about 1% of a £1,000 account. On a £300 account the same trade risks about 2.5% — survivable. The identical stop at 0.1 lots risks 25% of the account in a single trade. Anything bigger than that isn’t a trade, it’s a bet on whoever is sending the signals being honest.

5. The clause that can delete your profits

Read this one properly, because it is written for exactly how you trade.[10]

PU Prime can treat each of these as a “Default Event”, at its own sole discretion:[10]

• “willful misconduct”, “scalping, arbitraging off-market pricing”
• “use of excessive leverage”
• “suspicious trading activity”
• “same electronic identification point (i.e. IP address) as other client or communication with other clients”

The last one is the one that should worry you.

What "communication with other clients" means for a signal group

A signal channel fires the same trade on the same instrument at the same minute; you and your mates may be on the same flat’s Wi-Fi. That is the fact pattern this clause describes — and with Telegram it can trigger on trading the same signals, not just sharing an IP.[10] What they can then do: suspend the account, “void the Client’s Orders and cancel any associated profits”, “reverse any profits accrued from suspicious trading”, and close accounts “found to be associated with such practices”, “with or without prior notification”.[10] The complaints on review sites read exactly like this clause being used: profits removed by a manual adjustment entry, or an account frozen at the first withdrawal, with the firm citing its terms.[4][13] How the FCA describes these cases usually going: a small early return, encouragement to add more money, then the returns stop, the account is suspended and contact goes quiet.[2]

6. “But there’s only a few hundred pounds in there — isn’t my risk contained?”

Fair challenge — short version: on the money, you’re right. On the habits, no.

Where you’re right. You can lose all of it and still eat, pay rent and stay at university. That is what makes this survivable, and a cheap way to find out what leverage does. The money is not the problem.

The one money exception. Their contract does not promise negative balance protection. It warns that you “can lose more than your invested capital, and you may be required to make further payments”.[10] Now suppose a market gap — a news spike, or the Sunday-night open — jumps straight past your stop-out. The debit left behind is, in theory, a debt you owe. At a few hundred pounds that’s a small number — but it isn’t zero, and it’s the reason to keep leverage low rather than reasoning “it’s only £300, let’s go big”.

What a small balance does not contain:

1. The habits. The point of trading at 19 isn’t £300 — it’s what you’re practising. Signals, maximum leverage, topping up after a loss and sizing up after a win are habits, and habits get carried to a £30,000 account later. The habit is the compounding risk; the £300 is just where it’s learning. That’s the real argument for doing this differently, and it has nothing to do with the size of the account.
2. A small account forces you to trade wrong. The smallest trade is 0.01 lots — about $1,000 of currency, 2.5× your whole account — and you can’t go smaller. Meanwhile £300 makes a £5 win feel pointless, so you size up. Oversizing is how small accounts get wiped weekly instead of monthly.[6]
3. Percentage wins teach percentage lies. Making £30 on £300 feels like 10% in an afternoon and it feels brilliant — the same behaviour on £30,000 loses £3,000 in an afternoon. Small balances make leverage feel harmless.
4. “Only a few hundred” is how it stays small — until the first top-up. One top-up after a loss, then it’s a few hundred a month, and the number nobody sets is the annual total. Set that total now, and treat it as the cap.
5. Your ID and your money path. You’ve handed identity documents to a firm no UK regulator supervises, and the deposit routes include crypto, which can’t be reversed. Your money risk is capped at a few hundred; your data exposure isn’t capped at anything.[3][10]
6. Withdrawals: the one place small is worse. If a few hundred gets stuck, you’ve lost 100% of it. And it’s too small to be worth chasing through a process capped at €20,000.[7][8] There’s no partial protection at small size — it’s all or nothing.

Make the smallness work for you

• Cap the total for the year, not per deposit (pick a number you’d spend on a hobby — and that’s it).
• Never top up after a loss. That rule alone separates “experiment” from “leak”.
• Never increase your size after a win. That’s the rule that gets ignored, and it’s how the habit forms.
• Withdraw a small amount early, on purpose. A £100 withdrawal that arrives in a day tells you more than any review — and it is far easier to test while the balance is small than to rescue later.[10]
• Keep your statements — you’ll need them for tax, and some clients report not being able to get them.[4]

7. Who gets paid when you trade (follow the money)

This is the part nobody explains, and it changes how you read advice.[12][17][3]

PU Prime runs a public affiliate programme that pays per lot traded. Their own help centre works through a reference case of about $10perlot,splitbetweenamasterandasub-introducer.Independentrebatesitesadvertisepassingbackasmuchas\ast \ast$13.50 per lot**. There’s also a refer-a-friend payment of up to $150 per funded account.

So if the person who introduced you is on an affiliate link, they earn when you trade, not when you win. That doesn’t make them a liar — it makes their advice financed, and it means “keep trading” is never a neutral suggestion coming from that side of the table. Signal channels work the same way: free ones usually carry affiliate links; paid ones sell subscriptions. Both need you to trade.

The one question worth asking your friend

“Is that an affiliate link, and what do you earn per lot?” A straight answer is fine and honest. An evasive one tells you how to read every “you should try this” that follows.

And if anyone asks you to forward a link: promoting an unauthorised firm’s CFDs in the UK is a financial promotion that needs FCA approval — a criminal offence, which is why the FCA has prosecuted “finfluencers” over unauthorised CFD promotion. A private favour is one thing; a paid introduction is another.[16]

8. Tax: three lines, and one rule

• CFD profits are taxable. Capital Gains Tax at 18% or 24% once your gains are over the £3,000 yearly allowance, and CFD losses can be set against other gains.[18][19]
• Spread-betting wins are exempt from CGT because HMRC treats them as betting — and the flip side is that spread-betting losses give you no tax relief at all.[22][24]
• An offshore broker changes none of this — you’re taxed where you live. Trade often enough and HMRC can treat it as a trade, which taxes profits as income instead.[19]

The one rule: keep your statements. Tax needs them, and some PU Prime clients report not being able to get them.[4]

9. If you keep trading there — six rules

The six

1. Find out which company you’re contracted to (§3) — worst case is the St Vincent one.
2. Withdraw a small amount now, on purpose, while the balance is small.
3. Turn leverage down in the account settings and keep every trade to ~1% risk. If you won’t do that, you’re not trading, you’re gambling.
4. Cap the year, not the deposit — and never top up after a loss, never size up after a win.
5. Ask the affiliate question (§7), and treat any channel that hands you a sign-up link as a sales channel.
6. Save your statements and screenshots as you go.

10. The better version of the same activity

If you want to keep doing this, do it somewhere the rules are on your side. Your friend is right about IG — here’s the comparison, same activity, two venues.[20][21]

	PU Prime	IG spread betting
Who supervises it	Nobody in the UK; FCA warns about it[1]	FCA-authorised (IG Index Ltd)[21][22]
Biggest bet allowed	1:1000[6]	30:1 FX, 20:1 indices, 5:1 shares[20][21]
Can you lose more than you put in?	Their contract says yes[10]	No — protection is a legal rule[20][22]
If the firm collapses	Private panel, €20,000 cap, not for trading losses[7][8]	FSCS up to £85,000[23]
If you have a complaint	Private dispute body[7]	Free Ombudsman, and the firm is bound[1]
Tax on your winnings	CGT 18%/24%[18]	Exempt (but no loss relief)[22][24]
Cost	Spreads from 1.3 pips; $3.50/side/lot on Prime[6]	Forex from 0.06 pips, minimum 1p per point[21]
Do they publish how many clients lose?	Nothing[6]	“68% of retail investor accounts lose money”[22]

The number that ends the argument

IG is required to publish that 68% of its retail investor accounts lose money.[22] PU Prime isn’t required to publish anything, and doesn’t.[6]

My assessment (Alf): moving to IG improves four things at once — protection, the leverage ceiling, cost and tax — so I’d support it. But it’s a better venue, not better odds: it’s still betting against a market maker, the median account still loses, the signal-seller is still paid on turnover, and a 30:1 account can still be emptied — just never past zero. And “tax-free” isn’t a reason to trade: it cuts both ways, because your losses get no relief either.[24]

The order I’d actually put your money in:

1. ISA and pension first — the T212 ISA and SIPP already in progress. Real companies, no leverage, nobody paid per trade.
2. IG, or a demo account, to test the signals.
3. PU Prime: withdraw, rather than leaving a balance sitting there. If your friend pushes back on that, §7 tells you what the pushback is worth.

Sources

[1] https://www.fca.org.uk/news/warnings/pu-prime-pacific-union-seychelles-limited — FCA warning: PU prime / Pacific Union (Seychelles) Limited [2] https://www.fca.org.uk/consumers/forex-trading-scams — FCA: Forex trading scams [3] https://www.daytrading.com/pu-prime — DayTrading.com: PU Prime Review 2026 [4] https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.puprime.com — Trustpilot: PU Prime (rating withheld, fake reviews removed) [5] https://www.puprime.com/regulation — PU Prime: Regulation page [6] https://www.puprime.com/account-types — PU Prime: Account Types (leverage, margin call, stop out) [7] https://www.puprime.com/compensation-fund — PU Prime: Compensation Fund (Financial Commission) [8] https://financialcommission.org/pu-prime — Financial Commission: PU Prime membership [9] https://www.puprime.com/client-funds-insurance — PU Prime: Client Funds Insurance (Lloyd’s) [10] https://www.puprime.com/pdf/0628/PU_Prime_LLC_Client_Service_Agreement_26.pdf — PU Prime LLC Client Service Agreement (May 2026) [11] https://www.puprime.com/refer-a-friend — PU Prime: Refer-A-Friend (entity disclosure list) [12] https://helpcenter.puprime.com/hc/en-001/articles/13454988240271-I-calculated-the-commission-I-was-supposed-to-receive-but-the-actual-payout-amount-is-different-What-could-be-the-reason-for-the-discrepancy — PU Prime help centre: IB commission per lot [13] https://forexpeacearmy.com/forex-reviews/18199/puprime-review — Forex Peace Army: PU Prime review [14] https://handbook.fca.org.uk/handbook/cobs22/cobs22s5 — FCA COBS 22.5: CFD restrictions and standardised risk warning [15] https://www.dfsa.dk/supervision/warnings-against-companies/2023/warning-against-conducting-securities-trading-with-pacific-union-seychelles-limited-pu-prime — Danish FSA warning: Pacific Union (Seychelles) Limited / PU Prime [16] https://jdsupra.com/legalnews/likes-to-liability-uk-fca-cracks-down-1407800 — JD Supra: FCA finfluencer prosecution, s21 FSMA [17] https://premium-rebate.com/rebates/pu-prime — Premium-Rebate: PU Prime IB rebate advertised at up to $13.50 per lot [18] https://www.ig.com/uk/learn/trading/spread-betting-vs-cfds-tax — IG: UK tax on spread bets vs CFDs (2025/26) [19] https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/business-income-manual/bim56900 — HMRC BIM56900: CFDs and spread betting [20] https://www.fca.org.uk/publications/policy-statements/ps19-18-restricting-contract-difference-products — FCA PS19/18: restricting CFD products sold to retail clients (30:1-2:1, 50% close-out, no inducements, loss-% warning) [21] https://www.ig.com/uk/spread-betting — IG: UK spread betting (retail margin/leverage table, 1p per point, profits tax and stamp duty free) [22] https://ig.com/uk/learn/trading/spread-betting-vs-cfds — IG: spread betting vs CFDs (68% of retail accounts lose money; NBP yes; CGT exempt; UK and Ireland only) [23] https://www.fscs.org.uk/what-we-cover — FSCS: what we cover (investments up to GBP 85,000 per eligible person per firm) [24] https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/capital-gains-manual/cg56105 — HMRC CG56105: financial spread betting (no chargeable gains or allowable losses)