266 Saxo Bank employees gathered at 9:30am, told to leave. Managing growth is always difficult, but it is also a lot more enjoyable than managing in a time of austerity. And with a prolonged downturn in Forex trading volumes worldwide, some of the world's leading FX firms are feeling the pinch and need to deal with…
Read moreAcquisition rumors swirl around Knight Capital after weekend WSJ article. The parent company of Forex ECN Hotspot FX, Knight Capital (NYSE: KCG), has seen its shares spike by about 20% the past two trading days, since a Wall Street Journal weekend article stated that Knight was weighing the sale of its main equity market-market business…
Read moreEBS Direct to provide relationship-based, disclosed liquidity. ICAP-EBS, trying to play catch-up to competitors Thomson Reuters and FXall, has announced today the introduction of a new service called EBS Direct, to launch next month. Until now, all of EBS's services have been provided as an anonymous ECN matching platform. EBS claims to already have more…
Read moreInvestment Trends report blames increased regulation. The number of traders in the Singapore FX market has declined this year to 20,000 from 25,000 in 2011, a decrease of 20%, according to a new report by Australia-based financial research firm Investment Trends (to download the report summary click here). Singapore market share: Despite the decrease, Singapore remains…
Read moreGTX to provide technology and liquidity services for ICDX's new currency contracts. U.S. based Forex broker Gain Capital (Forex.com) announced that its institutional arm GTX has signed an agreement with the Indonesia Commodity and Derivatives Exchange (ICDX), the leading futures exchange in Indonesia, to provide trading technology and liquidity services for ICDX's new currency contracts. ICDX…
Read moreNew management in the UK and the US for Alpari. Retail FX broker Alpari has made some changes in its senior management ranks, as it has seen volumes fall by about 40% in 2012. The major changes include: OUT - David Stuart, COO of Alpari UK in London, has left the company. Trading volumes in…
Read moreStandard DoM, VWAP DoM, and Price DoM. Spotware Systems have announced the release of an innovative new Depth of Market for their popular STP trading platform, cTrader, which now has 3 different types of DoM: a Standard DoM, VWAP DoM, and Price DoM. The Price DoM offers the most in depth view of the…
Read moreJapan likely to regulate binaries beginning in the spring. LeapRate has learned that Japan's financial regulator JFSA has instructed regulated Japanese brokers to stop marketing binary option products to their customers, pending a regulatory review of the product by the JFSA. Binaries have become more popular in Japan the past two years, and the JFSA…
Read moreRetail FX volumes flat, but institutional volumes very slow globally in October. LeapRate's Retail FX Volume Index, sponsored by Leverate, was fairly flat in October, with global retail FX trading activity down 1% to $177 billion per day. However this marks the fourth consecutive month where volumes remained well below last year's levels, with the year-over-year declines…
Read moreSeveral newcomers, added to larger incumbents, all vying for falling volumes. As we've written recently, a number of Forex spot ECN aggregators have popped up in the past year, including tpSPOTDEAL (backed by Integral and Tullett Prebon), FastMatch (FXCM and Credit Suisse), traFXpure (Tradition), and MoltenFX. And this comes at a time when all the major established Forex ECNs…
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