Hi guys

As you already know, I recommed the reading of this report  the Weekly Forex Focus from Trading Central

Give it a look

Francesc

Download GURUFOREX2.pdf

Hi everyone

Here you have the response to our Open letter to FXstreet’s Swiss brokers from Crown Forex S.A CEO Mr. Shadi Swais.

I want to thank Crown Forex S.A and its CEO for their full and positive collaboration.

Francesc

————–

Hello Francesc,

The following are brief answers to your questions:

1. Is your company going to apply for a banking licence? Either yes or not, please explain why?
Due to the recent amendment in Swiss regulations, every Swiss Foreign Exchange broker must fall under the banking ordinance. Crown Forex has already started the process of obtaining a bank license with the Swiss Federal Banking Commission for the following reasons:

· Comply with the new regulations.
· Provide more security and higher standard services to our clients.
· To be able to expand our products to a wider selection of securities.

2. Are you keeping your clients reported? How will you inform about the new regulation and the impact on your business? Will you warn them in case that you don’t get (or even ask for) the banking licence?
Crown Forex is one step ahead of the new amendment, as we have been working on the license for over a year now and we will our clients informed through newsletters regarding the status of the procedure. On the other hand, investors must be very careful when dealing with Swiss brokers that do not see the high importance of applying for a bank license. It is important to keep in mind that many small brokers will not be able to apply or even comply with the new regulations due to the huge financial requirements this type of license incurs. 

3- A Swiss banking licence implies to meet higher capital - Sfr10 million ($9 million)- and/or organisational requirements. The licence also calls for Bank management members to meet certain professional standards. Do you think these measures could affect your company’s business in some way?
As mentioned above, we are one step ahead of the new laws. Moreover, we decided to put all chances on our side:

· Crown Board of Directors is made up of skilled lawyers specialised in corporate law, who are already members of other banks and securities dealers.
· We will be raising the company share capital up to CHF 11.5 Mil in the next six weeks, aiming to a 25Mil share capital target within the end of this year.
· Crown Forex management is assembled of highly experienced and motivated professionals.
· Additional specialized staff will be employed in order to support the private banking services that Crown will be providing in the beginning of 2009.

This change has already positively affected our business especially that all Crown VIP and institutional clients are already aware of our internal developments and have already entrusted even larger sums of investment with Crown Forex.

4 - Do you think SFBC taking over the regulatory control of Swiss FX brokers could be a breath of fresh air that may result in more investors joining the FX Market?
I personally think that it is high time the SFBC stepped into the picture in order to control the highly liquid and unregulated domain of Swiss Foreign Exchange brokers. With higher regulations such as a bank license, investors will be more confident to approach Swiss brokers than any other brokers. Needless to mention that at the same time, Swiss regulations became by far the most stringent and effective compared to other regulatory environments around the world.

5 - The U.S. has already started a similar process, what is your opinion on this? Is it affecting Swiss FX brokers business somehow?
The change in the US regulations consists mainly of higher capitalization requirements, while the Swiss regulations upgrade consists of the highest banking regulatory standards, accompanied of course by a much more significant capital requirement. You can add to that the unique Swiss bank secrecy Act that protects the investors’ interests, while in the US, the investors’ funds are always subject to the discretion of the US federal governing body.

6 - How do you see the M&A market in the FX industry? Do you expect important corporative movements in the next months? Would your company be on the bid side?
Well, there have been some mergers and acquisitions going on lately in the Forex industry.  Most of them took place towards the end of the year 2007, where the Expo season was at its peak. Nevertheless, Crown Forex is not interested in bidding on anything yet, neither in offering some of its own shares on the market in spite of how fast and powerful the industry is.

7 - Would you like to add something else?
As a result in the regulatory ordinances in Switzerland, very few Swiss brokers will remain in the game, if I may say so, by the end of 2009. Probably only 5 or 6 brokers will survive out of all the brokers, whether medium or small.

On the other hand, the quality of the services that the remaining brokers/Banks will have to offer will be of very high standards, such as the services that Crown will provide to its clients.

Best regards

SHADI SWAIS
CEO
CROWN FOREX SA

Hi everyone

Today April 29th 2008, I sadly have to announce that I have decided to end any relationship with Mr. Toni Juste.

Even though Tony officially stopped working at FXstreet.com in March 2008, we had a spoken agreement to resume our relationship on April 28th 2008.

However, starting today, we consider that Mr. Toni Juste is no longer a member of FXstreet´s staff.

Toni has been a very important member of our staff for the last 4 years, and I’m very thankful for the great work done during all this time.

Unfortunately, Mr. Toni Juste was not really honest when explaining to FXstreet.com’s board his reasons to move with his family to Switzerland. Toni is starting a new project in Switzerland that is absolutely incompatible with his work at FXstreet.com as director and head of trading of our Managed Account Program (MAP).

FXstreet is going to take actions to protect the quality of its services. Our management board has taken the following decisions:

1. Canceling FXstreet.com’s MAP program.
I will personally contact involved brokers and clients to let them know our decision

2. Canceling Trendex as a paid service.
At this time we are not able to guarantee the quality of the Trendex service. As a result Trendex will no longer be a paid service from May 1st 2008.
I will personally contact Trendex contributors to let them know about this and propose them new ideas that could be of their interest.

3. Looking for a new author to run the blog http://advisor.fxstreet.com  previously conducted by Mr. Juste.
FXstreet.com will start searching for FX traders that could be interested in becoming part of our content department running market blogs, providing market calls and exclusive contents for FXstreet.com.

I wish Mr. Toni Juste the best of luck, from today onwards our paths go in different directions.

Thanks

Francesc

Hi everyone

As you already know, on Friday we sent the Open Letter to FXstreet’s Swiss Brokers in order to get the feedback from top Swiss firms management about all the goings with the regulatory process opened by the SFBC.

I already got the response from Peter Furrer, CEO at GFX Group S.A (www.forex.ch).

I was expecting to get my questionnaire filled-up but Mr. Furrer preferred to send me a short reply.

I respect his choice of opting for this type of reply and I want to thank Peter and GFX Group for their full and positive collaboration.

Francesc

Good morning Francesc

Thank you for your mail.

As you know, GFX Group SA underwent a thorough audit by the SFBC during the course of 2007. As a result of this review we learned early that the SFBC will be requesting FX brokers in Switzerland to apply for a banking license as from April 1st, 2008 and we had started to prepare our company by increasing our share capital to CHF 10 Mio. (fully paid in). We also changed our external auditor to KPMG, who just completed our 2007 financial & MLA review.

We are in the process of applying for a banking license and as soon as we have the formal response from the SFBC we will let our clients and of course you know immediately.

With kind regards

Peter FURRER
Tel: +41-22-799-4105
Fax: +41-22-799-4109

Hi everyone

A quick e-mail before going for the weekend to let you all know that the Open letter to FXstreet’s Swiss brokers has been sent to Forex.ch, ACM Advanced Currency Markets SA, MIG Investments S.A and Crown Forex S.A.

I´m looking forward their responses that will be published here

Enjoy your weekend

Francesc

Hi everyone,

A couple of days ago we received an e-mail from one of our visitors, claiming a bad trading decision because of our Economic Calendar.

The e-mail was as follows:

Name: XXX

Message:
I use your economic calendar for making all my trading decisions, and today i was in for a rude shock your economic calendar showed the IFO Business Climate as 108 based on which i went long on the eur and when the market started falling i came back to check your calendar again and found to my horror it has been revised to 102. I always held fx street as a very reliable resource. I lost considerably on my trading account, can someone respond to this mail and tell me what went wrong, why was the news misquoted.
Thanks XXX

I wouldn’t like this to happen ever again, so I thought it would be a good idea to publish here my response to XXX

From: "Francesc Riverola"
To: "XXX"

Dear XXX

I would like to apologize in behalf of my company FXstreet.com

I’m deeply sorry that the mistake we made with the release of the IFO indicator you incurred in looses in your trading.

FXstreet’s goal is to help traders, for this reason we offer news, quotes, webinars, newsletters… and the economic calendar. We do our best to be the most accurate source on the net, but unfortunately we commit mistakes from time to time.

We will keep working to be the best source of FX information, but we always recommend our visitors to use us as a help source for decision making, and never ever use our services eyes blinded to trade. Always double check the data before taking a decision, double check FXstreet, Forex Factory, Dow Jones or Thomson… does not really matter the source… please double check.

Thanks

Francesc

Hi everyone

As weekend is coming along, it´s reading time.

I would like you to take some time to read the latest ebook from my colleague and friend Rob Booker

http://www.robbooker.com/books/help_bear.pdf

Let me know your opinion about it

Francesc

Hi everyone

Right after uploading my previous post, I just got by e-mail the last Weekly Forex Focus from Trading Central.

I strongly recommend you the reading of this weekly publication.

Worth to read it indeed

Francesc

Download GURUFOREX1.pdf

Hi everyone

If you are interested in the EUR/JPY, this article should be a must for you

A new piece of research from my friend David Solin, partner at Foreign Exchange Analytics

Francesc

Download euryen-daily-apr22.doc

Hi everyone

Here you have a nice report about EURUSD medium and long-term outlook from BBVA.

Interesting job from the BBVA’s technical analysis team indeed

Francesc

Download bbva.pdf