CANNON TRADING Review

When a broker with a gleaming 4.9-star Trustpilot rating but no verifiable regulatory licence lands on our desk, we at FXCanary know we need to dig deeper. Our review of Cannon Trading (legally Cannon Trading Company, Inc.) is built on a three‑pronged forensic process: a comprehensive cross‑check of financial‑services registers worldwide, a detailed analysis of the real user‑review record across multiple platforms, and a trawl through complaint databases, scam‑alert sites and industry watchlists.

We found zero regulatory licences, a registered office that appears to be a standard commercial suite, and an employee count that hints at a very lean operation — all while the public‑facing review profile paints a picture of near‑flawless service. In this investigation we walk you through every data point we gathered, explain what each one means for a retail trader’s safety, and deliver an unvarnished verdict tied to our 37/100 Guarded Scam Risk Score.

Cannon Trading Company, Inc. was founded on 14 March 2019 and lists its registered address as 12100 Wilshire Blvd Suite 1640, Los Angeles, CA 90025, United States. This is a prominent business address in Los Angeles, but it is a multi‑tenant office building; without further credentialing, it does not by itself lend the firm institutional weight.

Public records indicate the company has zero employees. Even allowing for contractors or remote staff, a futures‑focused brokerage with no formal employee count raises questions about operational depth, compliance infrastructure and the segregation of client‑facing from back‑office functions. For traders, this means the entity you are dealing with may be little more than an introducing broker or a marketing front, with customer funds potentially passing through third parties whose regulatory status is equally opaque.

The broker’s website claims decades of experience, but the legal entity itself is barely five years old. FXCanary could not independently verify any predecessor entities or brand inheritance, leaving a gap in the company’s claimed institutional pedigree.

This is the single most critical finding of our investigation: despite being located in the United States and inviting clients to trade futures and commodities, Cannon Trading holds no licence that we could locate on any major financial‑services register. We checked the National Futures Association (NFA) BASIC database, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) registrant lists, the SEC’s Investment Adviser Public Disclosure site, and multiple state‑level securities regulators — all returned no results for Cannon Trading Company, Inc.

In the US, any firm soliciting or accepting retail futures orders must be registered with the CFTC and be an NFA Member, unless it qualifies for a very narrow exemption. We saw no evidence that Cannon Trading falls under any such exemption; indeed, the broker’s marketing is squarely aimed at retail traders. Trading with an unregistered entity means you forfeit virtually all the protections built into US commodity law: no mandatory segregation of customer funds, no insurance through the NFA’s fidelity bond requirements, no access to the CFTC’s reparations programme, and no oversight of sales practices or order handling.

Even if the firm uses a registered carrying broker, the introducing broker itself typically still needs to be registered. The fact that a US‑domiciled broker could operate without a licence in plain sight is a profound red flag and the primary driver of our guarded risk rating.

Cannon Trading’s website and publicly available materials are conspicuously light on detailed account specifications. Unlike most regulated brokers, it does not publish a clear table of account tiers, minimum deposits, leverage limits, margin requirements or tradable instruments. In our review, we could not locate any official document — such as a product disclosure statement or account opening agreement — that spells out these fundamental trading parameters.

For a prospective trader, this opacity is a significant handicap. Without knowing the minimum deposit, you cannot assess whether the broker is targeting casual retail participants or serious professionals. Without published leverage ratios, you cannot calculate the risk of a margin call under normal market volatility. And without a clear instrument list, you have no way to verify that the markets being advertised are actually executable.

Our standard practice is to present account‑type data in a structured table; unfortunately, in this case the table would consist of a single row stating “Not Disclosed.” This lack of transparency forces traders to rely entirely on whatever a sales representative tells them, which is never a sound basis for a financial decision.

Despite the regulatory void, user reviews related to deposits and funding are uniformly positive — a total of three mentions, all favourable. Traders describe the funding process as “easy,” “drama‑free,” and completed with “no dramas” even from an international origin (New Zealand). One review explicitly contrasts the smooth Cannon experience with a frustrating attempt to open a stock trading account elsewhere.

However, three positive comments do not constitute a robust dataset. The sample is tiny, and all are from new‑account setups; we saw no long‑term withdrawal history from active traders who have moved significant sums back and forth over months or years. This is a crucial blind spot.

In the absence of external oversight, the safety of client deposits rests entirely on the broker’s internal controls — controls that we cannot verify. The industry norm for regulated brokers is to segregate client money in top‑tier banks and to publish periodic capital adequacy reports. Cannon Trading provides none of this. Traders should therefore approach any funding with extreme caution, and we strongly advise against depositing more than you are prepared to lose entirely.

User feedback around the platform and app experience is overwhelmingly positive, with 44 of 45 mentions praising the setup and functionality. Reviewers frequently highlight the personalised help they received — representatives remotely accessing their machines to configure chart settings, walking through integration steps, and patiently answering technical questions. This level of one‑on‑one support is rare in the brokerage industry and clearly accounts for much of the firm’s glowing reputation.

That said, the reviews are light on specifics about the actual trading platform. We note passing references to a “trading platform” and “built‑in options,” but no consistent naming of a third‑party provider such as NinjaTrader, Sierra Chart or MetaTrader. For a futures broker, this is unusual; professional traders choose a broker in part based on the execution platform and its connectivity to exchanges. Without a clear, verifiable list of supported platforms and data feeds, it is difficult to assess execution quality, latency, or the stability of the technology stack.

One review mentions that the data feed “has been consistent and dependable,” which is a positive note, but again, it is a solitary voice. We would want to see hundreds of such reports over an extended period before drawing firm conclusions about the infrastructure.

Twelve reviews mention spreads and fees, all in a positive light, though the comments are remarkably vague. Phrases like “got me the price I wanted,” “feels like a partnership,” and “established and reputable” suggest satisfaction with the overall cost arrangement, but no reviewer provides concrete numbers — no all‑in commission rates, no average spread widths, no comparison with industry benchmarks for futures trading.

In US futures markets, the competitive landscape is well known: many regulated brokers offer all‑in commissions below $0.50 per side for popular contracts, while others bundle fees into wider spreads. A broker’s true cost is a combination of commissions, exchange fees, NFA fees, and any mark‑ups on the data feed or platform. Because Cannon Trading does not publish a commission schedule or fee disclosure, a trader cannot meaningfully compare costs or calculate breakeven.

The positive sentiment in reviews may well be genuine, but it is likely driven by the personal rapport with the introducing broker rather than by objective cost savings. We advise traders to demand a full fee schedule in writing before funding an account and to cross‑check it with at least two other NFA‑registered futures brokers.

We analysed 562 Trustpilot reviews (as of this writing) and isolated the dominant themes. The single most frequently mentioned topic is customer support, with 119 mentions — 118 positive and zero negative. Reviewers repeatedly name individual representatives (Ilan Levy‑Mayer, Kimberly, Eli Gal, Mark O’Brien, John Thorp) and describe them as “exceptionally professional,” “patient,” “knowledgeable,” and “always available.” This pattern, where a handful of individuals become the heroes of the narrative, is typical of a high‑touch broking model where onboarding is labour‑intensive but post‑onboarding service may scale back.

Speed is the second most praised attribute (35 mentions, all positive), with users commending “quick response,” “very quick to respond,” and fast account activation. Trust and reliability garner 19 positive mentions, with reviewers saying the firm gives “honest, straight forward answers” and is “invested in my success.”

Profitability and payout‑related topics (9 mentions), order execution (2 mentions), and account/KYC (1 mention) are all peppered with positive remarks but carry minimal explanatory detail. The solitary scam‑concern mention is actually a positive one: a long‑term client says his representative “helps protect my account from fraud.”

What is conspicuously missing from this vast body of praise is any discussion of live trading performance over an extended period, any mention of actual withdrawal processing times or limits, and — most tellingly — any negative feedback whatsoever. In a genuine, organically grown review corpus, even an excellent broker will collect occasional complaints about slippage, commissions, platform glitches or withdrawal delays. The complete absence of even a single critical comment raises the possibility of gated review invitations, heavy curation, or a user base composed disproportionately of freshly acquired accounts that have not yet experienced the full lifecycle of a brokerage relationship. We are not accusing Cannon Trading of manipulating reviews, but we flag this anomaly as statistically improbable.

When FXCanary assembles a risk profile, we weigh negative signals against reassurances. In Cannon Trading’s case, the positive signals are almost entirely subjective — feelings of trust, personal rapport, helpfulness — while the objective, verifiable safety indicators are deeply troubling.

The most glaring red flag is the total absence of any regulatory licence. Operating a futures brokerage in the United States without CFTC registration and NFA membership is not merely a compliance oversight; it is a potential violation of federal law that exposes traders to the risk of fund loss with no official recourse. Coupled with the zero‑employee record, this suggests an entity that may be outsourcing all critical functions to unverified third parties.

Other gaps compound the concern: no published account specifications, no publicly disclosed fee schedule, no client‑fund segregation policy, no audited financial statements, and no evidence of a chief compliance officer. In our search of industry databases, we found no sanctions history, but we also found no licensing history — and it is the latter that matters most. The broker’s high Trustpilot score, while reassuring on the surface, cannot substitute for the structural protections that regulation provides.

Our editorial board assigns Cannon Trading a Scam Risk Score of 37 out of 100, placing it in the Guarded category. This score reflects a tense equilibrium: the overwhelming positivity of the user‑review record pulls the score upward from the floor of an outright scam, but the complete lack of regulatory oversight and essential transparency drags it down far below the threshold we would consider Tradable.

In our methodology, any broker operating without a licence in its home jurisdiction automatically starts at a score no higher than 50. Cannon Trading loses additional points for the thinness of its public disclosures, the small and unverifiable workforce, and the statistical oddity of a zero‑complaint review profile. It gains a few points back for the length of time it appears to have been operating without a known fraud event and for the absence of clone‑site or impersonator reports.

The Guarded rating is not a declaration that Cannon Trading is a scam; it is a warning that the broker presents significant, unmitigated risks that prudent traders should not ignore. There is a real, measurable danger that client funds are not protected in the way they would be with a registered firm.

If you are considering opening an account with Cannon Trading, we urge you to take specific, concrete precautions. First, ask the firm for its NFA ID number and CFTC registration status in writing, and independently verify the answer on the NFA’s BASIC website. If they cannot produce an ID, or if the ID does not match, walk away.

Second, never deposit more than a small test amount until you have completed at least one full withdrawal cycle, and document the timeline and any fees charged. A broker that delays or obstructs withdrawals — especially an unregulated one — is a classic sign of trouble.

Third, explore regulated alternatives. The US futures market is populated by dozens of well‑known, NFA‑registered introducing brokers and FCMs that offer competitive commissions, robust platforms, and the full suite of customer protections. The additional comfort of knowing your funds are held in segregated accounts at a clearing firm that undergoes regular audits is well worth any minor difference in service.

Finally, pay attention to the broader pattern, not just the personal warmth of a sales call. A charming introduction can feel like trustworthiness, but in finance, trust must be built on verifiable facts, not on charm alone. FXCanary’s job is to give you those facts; what you do with them is up to you.