Anybody still thinking his cash with a futures broker is safe, no matter how financially weak the broker is, simply because of the requirement that the broker puts client's funds into a seggregated account, should read today's headlines:

"MF Global, the securities firm led by Jon Corzine, admitted using clients' money as its financial troubles mounted, a federal official says.

An MF Global executive admitted that to federal regulators in a phone call early Monday after regulators raised questions about the company's books, according to an official familiar with the conversation."

All we need is one or more European banks going belly up, some of which are much bigger than Lehman Brothers, and we could have financial Armageddon with several of the weaker brokerage companies going belly up too.

In my humble opinion IB is the strongest and best managed retail brokerage firm. BTW, it was IB, who was considering buying MF Global, which discovered the discrepancies in their books.