This guys is doing a great job keeping us all more than well up-dated about the latest goings in the Retail Forex Industry. I’m talking about Michael Greenberg and his site Forex Magnates.

Worth following him

Francesc

FXCM releases Financial Data for Q3 2009: Over $115 million in capital
by Michael Greenberg, Forex Magnates

Hi everyone

Last week I made a post here that has generated some interest among you the readers:

Crisis in the Retail Forex Portals Business as well?

In this post I was talking about the possibility of the economic crisis hitting not just volume trade, the profits of the retail Forex brokers but also hitting hard the Forex Portals industry. The argument was based on the fact of 3 middle size Forex portals being put on sale almost at once.

Yesterday I got an e-mail from the owner of a well-know Forex site were he was giving me his view. It goes completely in the opposite way my post was pointing to so I wanted to highlight it here to let you take your own conclusions.

He said: “… I think the FX become more popular. A lot of FX sites raise money and I receive calls from big investment firms who want to introduce themselves.
We will certainly see new fx portals with big investors behind… It’s only the begin of the fight ;)”

On the other hand, retail FX brokers are seeing their profits going down fast. That will be a matter of another post, but this decrease in profits should have to have an impact on advertisement budget, and this should affect FX portals too.

This post may reflect the problems some FX brokers are currently facing or just is it a consequence of a fierce competition:

Up to $3,000 for opening your Forex account…. Who gives more?

So… what do you think?

Francesc

MF Global Exits Bermuda, Posts Loss
By The Wall Street Journal
MF Global Ltd. said Thursday it plans to relocate its legal base from Bermuda to the U.S. where it believes financial reform will make it more competitive with bank rivals.
The derivatives brokerage has railed against what it views as the anti-competitive impact of banks receiving U.S. government backing, but said it is regaining lost market share.
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MF Global Reports Second Quarter 2010 Results
By Reuters
MF Global Ltd. (NYSE: MF), a leading intermediary offering customized solutions in global cash, derivatives and related markets, today reported financial results for the second fiscal quarter of 2010, ended September 30, 2009. Second Quarter Highlights:
* Revenue, net of interest and transaction-based expenses (net revenue), was $252.0 million for the second quarter versus $372.9 million for the same period last year.
* GAAP net loss applicable to common shareholders was $16.0 million or $0.13 per basic and diluted share for the second quarter, compared with net income of $3.5 million or $0.03 per basic and diluted share for the same period last year.1
* Client payables were $12.2 billion at September 30, 2009 compared to $14.0 billion at September 30, 2008. MF Global`s market share in August 2009 of U.S. segregated assets was 5.8%, a 12-month high.
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Forex settlement volumes rise in Oct - CLS
LONDON, Nov 5 (Reuters) - The average number of daily foreign exchange payment instructions rose 7.1 percent in October from the previous month, data from FX settlement system CLS Bank showed.
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Hi everyone

A trader friend of mine send me this beautiful article from the Wall Street Journal and she told me:

“I know you know that the phenomenon of currency pairs (or any asset) respecting historical support and resistance, even from long ago, is well-known but not generally well explained.
An article this morning in the Wall Street Journal relates how red deer still won’t cross what was once the electrified and heavily guarded fence line between West Germany and Czechoslovakia. This fence was torn down 18 years ago, before the deer today were born. There’s just something about those old lines that gets imprinted in traders and red deer, I guess. I wonder how red deer would do at trading, LOL.”

Deep in the Forest, Bambi Remains The Cold War’s Last Prisoner by The Wall Street Journal

Enjoy it!

Thanks D.F

Francesc

Hi everyone

On October 28th 2009 I got an e-mail from a friend notifying me that the Cyprus based Forex Retail Broker FxPro was withdrawing from its activities in the U.S.

Searching the web, the only thing I found was a release from FXCM welcoming US based traders from FxPro.

FXCM Welcomes US Based FX Pro Traders

I contacted FxPro management to get an official statement regarding this issue and this is what I’ve just received from them.

I want to thank FxPro management for their great collaboration

Francesc

FxPro Financial Services Ltd (FxPro): Company Statement
Since our launch, FxPro has developed good business with clients across the globe, in over 120 countries. As with any commercially sound company, we make every effort to invest in those markets where we see strong growth and business opportunities. In the last year we have recognized that the majority of our client base is building across the EU countries and the emerging markets, and we see these particular geographies as one of our core strengths as a company. It is with this in mind that we have made a carefully considered decision to withdraw from the US market. We have therefore given all of our US-resident clients on 22 October 2009 three months’ notice of our plan of action.

At the close of 25 January 2010 (00:00 Server Time), all affected Trading Accounts are expected to have no Open Positions. At the same time all Pending Orders will be canceled, and all Open Positions will be automatically closed at that time at the last available price. After 25 January 2010, the status of US-resident Trading Accounts will be set to “Read Only” on FxPro’s Trading Platform, meaning that no trading activity can be performed, but will be fully accessible for reference and historical analysis only. On January 26 2010, all remaining funds in US-residents’ Trading Accounts will be refunded to their original sources,

Robert White
Head of PR
FxPro

Hi everyone,

Last Thursday October 29th I published here a post that generated high interest among you my readers.

It was a post talking about a possible crisis in the retail Forex Portals business as in a period of a few weeks 3 known Forex Portals had been put on sale.

Crisis in the Retail Forex Portals Business as well?

Well…, I can’t disclose the name of two of them but I can about the 3rd one.

GoForex.net is currently on sale. GoForex.net is a Forex Portal that went live in June 2004 and as for data for July 2009 the site has 38,000 unique visitors, 58,000 visits and 140,000 page views.

If you were interested in talking with the owner of GoForex.net, please put yourself in contact with Steve Moxham, Managing Director at Forex Holdings (NZ) Limited.

You can contact Steve at

http://www.goforex.net/contact.htm

ZuluTrade.com Revolutionizes Autotrading of Foreign Currencies Online
World’s first and only provider of autotrading services focused exclusively on foreign currency trading leverages patent-pending technology to automatically replicate trades of expert online FX traders
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–ZuluTrade.com is the world’s first FOREX autotrading social community, enabling third party algorithmic trading masterminds to be auto-traded through account holders in many brokerage firms worldwide. With close to 5,000 active accounts today, ZuluTrade has over $150 billion USD in transactions so far. The company achieved 500% annual growth since 2008 and is currently sustaining 20% average monthly growth rate.
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As one of the the guys commenting on this article said, I found it “…rest of the article is exaggerating the issue and may be making a mountain out of mole hill.”

What do you think?

Does the author have a point or does he get things out of context?

Francesc

The $100bn FX hustle
By Paul Murphy
FT Alphaville

$100bn — that’s the daily figure for trading volume in the retail foreign exchange market, where amateur plungers play the dollar and the like.
The IPO prospectus for Gain Capital, one of the scores of firms tapping into this area of explosive growth, sets out the juicy business on offer (emphasis FT Alphaville’s):
“Foreign exchange, or forex, trading is one of the fastest growing areas of retail trading in the financial services industry. According to its most recent report, the Aite Group, a financial services industry market research firm, reported that by the end of 2008, average daily trading volume in the retail forex market reached approximately $100.0 billion, a 900% increase from 2001. Our total annual customer trading volume, which is based on the U.S. Dollar equivalent of notional amounts traded, grew from $120.3 billion in 2004 to $1.49 trillion in 2008, representing a compounded annual growth rate of 87.6%…”
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Saxo Bank acquires stake in offshore IT house Initto
Finextra.com
Online financial services firm Saxo Bank has acquired a 40% stake in Danish offshore software and IT service provider Initto.
Established in 2003, Initto has around 200 employees based mainly in India and Ukraine.
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Saxo Bank announces intention to speed up development of trading systems
BrinkWire
Saxo Bank, the online specialist in trading and investment, has announced the acquisition of a 40% stake in Initto, the Danish owned software and IT services provider. Initto has around 200 employees based mainly in India and Ukraine and the acquisition of Initto will enable Saxo Bank to continue to support and speed up the development of its trading systems.
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