Voice on the record, and never borrow to win it back
The recorded line exists so that a retail client can later prove what was said on it. The rules built around that tape in Spain point to a plainer lesson about where trading money should come from.
Anyone who has placed an order by phone with a European broker has heard some version of the notice at the start of the call: this line is recorded. Since January 2018 the recording has been a legal duty, and for a retail client in Spain it is one of the few pieces of evidence that outlast a bad trade. What the tape protects, and what it cannot, says a good deal about how retail trading goes wrong.
Why the line is taped
Article 16(7) of MiFID II, the European Union’s rulebook for investment firms, requires a firm to record telephone conversations and electronic messages that relate to dealing for its own account or to receiving, passing on and executing client orders. Calls meant to produce a trade count even when no trade followed. Clients must be told in advance that the line is recorded, and a firm may not take phone orders from anyone it has not told. The records are kept for five years, or up to seven where the supervisor asks, and the client involved can request them.
Spain carries the rule in Article 177 of its securities markets law, Ley 6/2023, and the CNMV, the national securities regulator, can demand the recordings when it investigates. For a retail client, a dispute over the price quoted or whether a risk was ever mentioned stops being one memory against a firm’s.
Spain added a layer of its own. Under a 2018 CNMV circular, a retail client buying a product the regulator considers especially complex must write out by hand that it is hard to understand and generally unsuitable for retail investors. When the sale is made by phone, the firm keeps a recording of the client saying those words and hands it over on request.
Retail trading in Spain
The product behind most of these rules is the contract for difference, or CFD, a bet on a price move settled in cash and bought on margin. A 2014 CNMV study of about 8,000 Spanish clients over almost two years found that 75 percent had lost money, €3,300 each on average. National studies gathered by the European Securities and Markets Authority before 2018 put the share between 74 and 89 percent. Providers now have to print their own figure, and on September 29, 2026, the Spanish sites of three large ones gave 51, 77 and 84 percent of retail accounts losing money.
Since 2019 the CNMV has capped retail CFD leverage, from 30 to 1 on major currency pairs down to 5 to 1 on individual shares and 2 to 1 on crypto assets. A position must be closed once the money backing it falls to half the initial margin, and a retail client cannot lose more than the account holds. A further CNMV resolution, in force since August 2023, went beyond the European baseline: no CFD advertising aimed at retail clients in Spain, no paid branding of events or organizations, no brand campaigns built on public figures, no free courses or demo accounts to draw people in, no call centers ringing prospects, and no deposits by credit card.
The promotion moved to people. In April 2026 the CNMV published a guide to “finfluencers”, the social media accounts that talk about saving, markets and trading. A large following proves nothing, it says, pressure to act right now is a warning sign in itself, and anyone offering personal investment advice has to be authorized, which the CNMV’s registers or its free investor line, 900 535 015, can confirm. A trading tip in a video comes with no recording duty, no handwritten warning and often nobody who can be held to it later.
Never borrow to trade, or to win back a loss
The ban on credit card deposits is the regulator’s view compressed into one clause: money that has to be repaid does not belong in a leveraged account. The same holds for any short loan. In Spain these are sold openly online, and Avinto, one such lender, says on its own site when a quick loan is the right choice: when the repayment is tied to a specific income, such as the next payslip, an invoice already issued or a sale already closed. A market position is none of those. It recovers on the market’s timetable, if at all, and the loan does not wait for it. It is the wrong tool for trading, and would be with any other lender’s name on it.
Leverage makes the mismatch worse. At the 5 to 1 cap on a single share, a 10 percent fall eats half the margin, which is the point where the provider must close the position. The trade ends having lost roughly half the money in it, and a borrowed stake is still owed in full the next morning.
Chasing a loss is where the damage compounds. A trader €300 down who borrows €300 to win it back has not improved the odds of recovery. The stake is larger, leverage multiplies it, and a lender is now owed whatever the chart does. If the second trade loses too, there are two losses, the market’s and the borrowed one with its interest, and the second comes with a date attached. The only money that belongs in a trading account is money whose loss would change nothing else.
Borrowing for an everyday shortfall, a boiler repair or an electricity bill due before the wages arrive, is a separate question with its own arithmetic. And when a shortfall has already grown past what one paycheck can fix, the social services office at the local town hall costs nothing to visit, and in many municipalities it runs emergency aid for rent and utility bills, which no lender offers.
What the recording is for
When a trade goes wrong after a phone call, the first step is to ask the firm for the recording, which the rules entitle the client to have. A complaint goes to the firm’s customer service department first, and if the answer disappoints or never comes, to the CNMV’s complaints service, which charges nothing. A tape of a salesperson promising returns, or of a warning that was never read out, is evidence. A video from an account with a million followers is not, and neither is a loan agreement signed to meet a margin call.