Hi everybody,

A source - is that source overinterested to keep this issue boiling? - sent me today a pdf with a copy of the letter sent last August 17th by Thomas W. Sexton, Vice President and General Counsel at NFA, to Mr. David Stawick, Office of the Secretariat at the CFTC, notifying that:
"NFA respectfully requests that the Commission review and approve the proposed amendments to NFA Financial Requirements Section 11 and the Interpretive Notice regarding Forex Transactions."

To view the letter, please click below

Download NFA.pdf

Francesc

HI everybody

Marina Schiaffino has just published on FXstreet.com a special coverage about NFA’s new requirements and their potential impact on the FX industry.

http://www.fxstreet.com/fundamental/analysis-reports/special-coverage/2007-08-30.html

There will be more to come for sure

Nice job Marina!

Francesc

In our constant effort to improve the services of our web, we are about to launch a new Quotes & Charts service for the Futures section.

We will share this project with Interactive Data and Netdania, two of the leading companies in the sector, which will provide us with the most up-to-date information for all the main futures markets.

Working with huge exchanges such as CBOT, EUREX, CME, ICE, LIFFE or Euronext we will be able to offer one of the most complete Q&CH service in the whole net. You will find intra-daily quotes and charts on Metals, Energy, Financials, Indices, Interest Rates and all the principal Futures Markets.

Hi Everybody

Even if I´m sick today - yep, again the flu,… nothing worse than having the flu in summer… - I decided that I had enough of getting bored in bed and took advantage now that everybody is doing a great siesta (after lunch nap), I came on my tiptoes to the laptop to check e-mails and to share with you the latest numbers of attendants to FXstreet’s International Traders Conference - also known as ITC - that I just received from Maud, ITC’s manager.

The last to enroll has been a guy from Germany that made the payment today, so with him we have already 33 paid members from fifteen countries.

UK is leading this friendly competition with 6 members, closely followed by Spain with 5, third place is for Portugal with 3 and then a long list of countries with two representatives.

UK: 6
Spain: 5
Portugal: 3
USA: 2
The Netherlands: 2
Germany: 2
Norway: 2
Austria: 2
Cyprus: 2
Luxembourg: 2
Australia: 1
Austria: 1
Finland: 1
Greece: 1
Belgium: 1

We have also sent some documentation to Spanish authorities to help a guy from Pakistan to get a VISA. I hope we will make it!.

See you all in October

Btw, very hot the last few days here in Tarragona - a city a 100km away from Barcelona - where I´m spending my vacations with my family

Francesc

Hi everybody

As you already know we at FXstreet.com are trying to bring some light on how the US FX industry will adjust themselves to NFA’s new regulatory requirements.

In my Open letter to FXstreet’s clients affected by NFA capital requirement changes I contacted those brokerage firms that are FXstreet.com’s current clients and that could be affected by the NFA’s proposal.

This time I would like to know the opinion of our clients not affected by the raise of capital requirement to $5 million but affected by the change in accounting methods and internal controls, as well as concerned by the shaking effect that capital raise could have in the industry in terms of bankruptcies and mergers & acquisitions triggering.

That’s why I´m putting together a battery of questions I would like to submit to CEO’s of main FX brokerage firms as FXCM, GFT, FXSolutions, CMS…, and also to non-american top firms as Saxo Bank, ACM,…

Questions:

- What is your opinion on the recent NFA regulatory changes? How do you view the implementation of new measures for FDMs?

- The new proposal also calls for the use of proper and uniform accounting methods and tightens internal controls. Do you find this a measure that could affect your company’s business in some way?

- Do you consider these measure a breathe of fresh air that could result in more investors joining the FX Market?

- Would your company be on the bid side if some firms were not meeting new requirements? What is your company’s policy on smaller firms’ acquisitions?

- For many, the very business model of Forex brokerage firms that needs to be decided is whether or not such brokerage houses can take opposite trading positions to those held by their customers, i.e., trading ‘against them’, which contradicts traders’ well-being. What is your company’s position on this? Is your firm currently taking the other side of customers’ position/trade?

These questions are the ones that occur to me but, again, I´m coming for your help… Any question you may wish to add that I´m missing?

As always, thanks for your great help!

Francesc

Hi everybody

An interesting thread to keep yourself posted about all the going on regarding NFA’s new requirements and its effects on the US FX industry:

http://www2.oanda.com/cgi-bin/msgboard/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=000519;p=5

Francesc

Hi everybody,

I must congratulate once again Mr. Toni Juste for his Managed Account Program (MAP) excellent performance so far.

If we review last data available for August 1st 2007 we can observe that net profits topped 18.7%, 3.7% above our profit % target for the full year of 15% and still August and September to come

Starting Capital (October 1st, 2006)    $100,000
Current Equity (August 1st, 2007)     $118,893
Actual Net % Result    +18.70%
Projected Net % Result    +15.00%
Standard Deviation (*)    +3.70%
Beta (**)    0.17
Largest Positive Change     +1.59%
Largest Negative Change     -1.03%

I asked Toni to send me a few lines about how MAP was performing so here you have beloew what he told me:

“July ends with the % profit achieved being above the full year target even though we still have the September month to go and also bearing in mind that August was the month where I took my holidays. The liquidation of the carry-trade, which was my fight for almost 7 months, finally brought up good results to the account, although I was not in for the big crash, which should’ve certainly accounted for much more. Anyway, yearly target has been surpassed and I believe we will extend the gap between projected and actual result filtering and trading the good % probability trades on the time & cycle calculation method which so far this year has worked as the best decision-making partner. Just as a reminder, the model was bearish on the carry trade even though market conditions were not favourable, but it emerged as the solely winner of the situation in the end.”

Again, congratulations Toni!

Francesc

Hi everybody,

Today I would like to show you all the top ten visitor’s countries list at FXstreet.com for the period from August 1st to August 22nd 2007

The list is leaded by the United States with 2 of 10 visitors, followed by United Kingdom and Canada. The list is closed by Spain with 2 of 100 visitors from this country

Country/Territory:
1. United States 22.52%
2. United Kingdom 6.13%
3. Canada 5.46%
4. Singapore 5.45%
5. India 4.69%
6. Hong Kong 4.52%
7. Malaysia 3.90%
8. Australia 3.42%
9. Indonesia 3.13%
10. Spain 1.90%

Francesc

Hi Everyone

If things keep going as they have been doing the first 20 days of August, we should close August hitting a new all-times record in unique visitors and visits.

If we consider we will have for the full month the performance we have had the twenty days already passed in August – without counting today’s data – we should close August above 350,000 unique visitors and above 1,230,000 views, overcoming 326,000 unique visitors and 1,200,000 views in July.

In page views we should be around 3,900,000 page views, still far from 4,000,000 reached in May 2006.
We should consider here that in June 2006 we moved our site from .asp to .net technology so this implied a fall in page views not only for the problems we had implementing and running the new site, but new site came with Ajax technology – for instance our Economic Calendar is made with Ajax – so page view have not recovered yet since the move… but soon we will reach a new high here too 

Download FXstreet.com.pps

Hi everybody

Maud Gilson, in charge of the Fxstreet.com Internationl Traders Conference (ITC), just informed me we would make a very interesting promotion on the ITC fee entrance!

We will offer a 30% discount on the ITC fee to all registrants and attendees of the successful monthly “Trade Non-Farm Payrolls LIVE” webinar organized on September 7th. This special price is on the Non-Premium Fee… which means you can join us in Barcelone for 210 € instead of 300 €! (Premium Members can already enjoy the special price of 200 €).

Don’t miss the opportunity! If you are interested, you can register here and you’ll receive an email after the webinar with information about how to make the payment.

We’ll already reach the 16th Edition of the “Trade Non-Farm Payrolls LIVE” in collaboration with our contributor Wayne McDonell. The audience is awesome: up to 500 people usually register for this special webinar and the event gathers an average of 300 people!

Don’t miss these two coming events… participate to the online and virtual session of Wayne McDonell and then meet him personnaly in Barcelona!

We have already 31 paid members and growing

Francesc