But poor planning left GFT's clients unable to trade for several days. If this story sounds like a poorly scripted one to you, then you're probably right. Just three days after GFT dropped the surprise that it is abandoning the U.S. retail FX market -- thereby putting its clients in a position-closing-only basis -- now comes…
Read moreNovember FX trading volume data looking good so far... After in October reporting its slowest trading month since 2005, and losing the #2 spot in the Forex ECN market to FXall, ICAP's EBS unit announced that November's daily FX volumes in November rose by 12% to average $103.8 billion. While nicely up over October, EBS's volumes…
Read moreLooks like the risk-on / risk-off volatility in November helped drive FX volumes. CME Group, which runs the world's largest derivatives marketplace, announced that FX contract volumes (mainly Eurodollar futures contracts) in its system were up by 9% in November from October levels to an average of 775,000 contracts daily. It looks like the U.S. election-driven…
Read morePrime brokerage business growing as large investors diversify away from traditional banks. One phenomenon we've written about recently is the emergence of industry-specific prime brokers, including in the FX world, as larger investors either leave their traditional / big-bank brokers, or just look to diversify away and create alternative trading avenues. Financial software provider SunGard…
Read moreMobile trading beginning to take hold in the FX world. Forex software provider MetaQuotes, maker of the popular MetaTrader trading platforms, reported that as of the end of November it passed an important milestone, with 500,000 active users of mobile terminal versions of its MT4 and MT5 trading platforms. More specifically, the breakdown is 418,000 mobile…
Read moreICAP's EBS taking drastic steps to bring back clients. ICAP's Forex ECN unit, EBS, may be losing market share to competitors such as Thomson Reuters and FXall (which recently passed EBS to take the #2 slot in the market), but EBS management is not taking it lying down. After last week announcing that it was…
Read moreNFA has made it impossible for all but largest of online brokers to survive. GFT, one of the five largest US-based retail FX brokerage firms, has decided to close shop in its own home market (as well as in Japan). GFT posted a notice on its home page stating that it had "made a business…
Read moreCompetition for MT4 bridges heats up between market leaders Gold-i, Leverate, BT, CMAP... UK-based GKFX, a relative newcomer to the FX brokerage business, has selected Gold-i's MT4 bridge. An MT4 bridge enables banks and brokers (offering trading on the MT4 or MT5 platforms for clients) to connect MetaTrader to external or internal liquidity providers, such…
Read moreFirst foreign info provider to be allowed to deliver onshore CNY prices. As global interest in China's currency has grown, there has been increasing dialogue about the divergence of China's internal "onshore" Renminbi market (CNY), and the trading of the currency outside China in the "offshore" market (CNH). While the offshore CNH market has grown…
Read moreEither way, likely that Hotspot FX finds a new home. Things sure can move fast on Wall Street. Just several hours after we blogged about (likely) potential bids emerging for the entirety of market-maker Knight Capital -- not just for one of its divisions, which was the topic of a weekend Wall Street Journal article…
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