City Index, owner of FX Solutions, is the latest major FX firm to abandon the U.S. It should come as no surprise to those who follow our blog, or the FX industry generally, that yet another international FX firm has decided that their capital is better deployed somewhere other than the U.S. After recently seeing…
Read moreMT4 trading still separate from the "main" Saxo Bank, but this time using the Saxo Bank brand. Saxo Bank has announced a relaunch of its MT4 business, this time under the SaxoMT4 brand. Visitors to the old Forextrading.com website are now redirected to SaxoMT4.com (see screenshot below). Those who want to trade at Saxo Bank using…
Read moreDarren Mast, Getco COO, named Interim Head of Currencies at the merged company. In what seems like a clear sign that the merged Knight Capital and Getco company will look to sell its Forex ECN division Hotspot FX, Knight Capital announced today that post-merger, the Currencies division (namely, Hotspot FX) will be run an interim…
Read moreTradeSlide aims to become an industry standard for rating traders. The ever-crowded FX social networking and copytrading space (Currensee, Tradeo, Zulutrade, FX Junction, MyFXbook...) is about to get a little more crowded, with the pending launch of TradeSlide. TradeSlide is being founded by two London and Spain-based brothers from outside the FX space, Javier and Juan…
Read moreVolatility and activist central banks have attracted institutions to FX trading in 2013. Business news outlet CNBC ran an interesting piece, on why mainstream institutional traders are taking up active currency trading in 2013. It seems as though the increased volatility which has brought back retail traders to FX trading -- with January being one…
Read moreAnd it does appear that Alpari Russia does more than half the Group's volumes. As we estimated in our post last week once we saw Alpari Russia volume figures for January, the Alpari Group confirmed that it did globally, in total, more than $200 billion in volume for the month (more than $210 billion actually,…
Read moreThe competitors in the Forex ECN business will jointly provide FX rate fixings in major currencies. In what seems like a move meant to fend off upstart bank-backed competitors such as ParFX and FastMatch, Thomson Reuters and ICAP's EBS unit have announced that they will jointly release 30-minute FX rate fixings. Currently, Thomson Reuters and…
Read moreChanges within the Alpari Group are bearing fruit. Alpari Russia has reported that Jaunary FX trading volumes came in at a record $110 billion, which the company attributed to "a well-thought-out marketing strategy, ... new technological solutions ... and a favorable situation in the market." Based on the figures reported, we estimate that Alpari has…
Read moreFX Volumes make a big comeback in January, led by Japan, as a global "risk-on" trade brings back volatility. LeapRate's Retail FX Volume Index, sponsored by Leverate, spiked up 18% in January from December levels to $201 billion per day. January's index figure was the highest we've seen since August 2011, and represented one of the busiest…
Read moreCySEC issues press release asserting its "authority to reach settlements". Well it seems as if we've ruffled some feathers at Cyprus' financial regulator CySEC. In an apparent response to our article Wednesday in which we claimed that CySEC is shaking down a number of FX brokers, CySEC issued a press release yesterday (full wording included below,…
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