It wasn’t supposed to work that way. Commodities firms are required to keep clients’ money separate from the firm’s capital.

In the commodities world, these segregated accounts had been seen as stronger than the deposit insurance offered by banks that are members of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the protection on securities, like stocks and bonds, given by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation.

But regulators suspect that MF Global did not keep its clients’ money separate in its chaotic waning days, using some customers’ money, they believe, to meet its own obligations. And if the firm violated the rule requiring segregated accounts, investors say they are now concerned about the viability of commodities trading as it has been conducted in the United States for more than a century.

“If they’re not going to uphold segregated funds, this can happen again tomorrow to anyone,” said Paula Pierce, a commodities lawyer in Virginia. “The question is whether anyone is going to do anything about it.”

R. David Gary, a spokesman for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which was MF Global’s main regulator, said the commission planned to review the rule governing segregated accounts at a meeting on Dec. 5. Michael Shore, a spokesman for the CME Group, which owns the main exchanges where MF Global traded, said: “It’s important to understand this was an unprecedented situation for our industry and that the shortfall in total customer segregated funds occurred at the firm level, not at the clearinghouse level.”

The regulators attribute some of the delay in returning clients’ money to what the court-appointed trustee has described as sloppy bookkeeping at MF Global, which has made it difficult to find what is left and where it is. But lawyers representing clients who have lost access to their money do not accept this argument. They say that segregated accounts are sacrosanct and that the money in them should have been immediately returned to their clients.

“It hasn’t worked out well for anyone yet, even the people who had positions move over early on,” said Timothy Butler, a partner at Tibbetts Keating Butler in Darien, Conn., who represents 10 clients with accounts ranging from $6,000 to several million dollars. “I had one person who got no margin transferred and was virtually wiped out. He had a $250,000 gold position, and he only got back $50,000 after it was liquidated.”

Nor are the issues raised by the MF Global bankruptcy simply about the safety and security of money in segregated accounts at commodities brokerage houses. They also raise questions about the safety of investments at other types of firms.

ARE YOU PROTECTED? Just because there is protection in place does not mean you will have access to your money quickly — or that anyone will care if this poses a hardship.

Jerome Beazley, president of TimeTech Capital Management, a commodities trading adviser in Esmont, Va., had all of his clients’ money with MF Global. He may eventually get his clients’ money back, but until then he is out of business.

He declined to give the exact amount at issue but said he had put it all into cash a few weeks before MF Global collapsed. But because only money backing open futures positions has been transferred so far, he has no access to the money.

He said he was upset that the trustee did not immediately move the commodities accounts to another firm, as happened when other clearinghouses he used went bankrupt. “There is a wall between the creditors and the segregated funds,” he said. “That’s like vault money. When you touch it, you’ve destroyed the credibility of Wall Street.”

Jack Lucentini, a science writer, has also been hurt by what he considered a safe play — having extra cash in his MF Global account. “I had this obsession with never having to get a margin call,” he said. “I thought I’d be able to sleep like a baby by having so much money in there.”

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