SunGard introduces management tool for Prime Brokers LeapRate

December 05, 2012 BY Gerald Segal

SunGard introduces management tool for Prime Brokers

Prime 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…

December 04, 2012 BY Gerald Segal

MetaTrader reports 500,000 mobile users

Mobile 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…

December 03, 2012 BY Gerald Segal

EBS buys ClientKnowledge

ICAP'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…

December 03, 2012 BY Gerald Segal

GFT abandons US and Japan retail FX markets

NFA 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…

December 03, 2012 BY Gerald Segal

GKFX goes with Gold-i MT4 bridge

Competition 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…

November 30, 2012 BY Gerald Segal

Bloomberg first with access to China's CFETS

First 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…

November 29, 2012 BY Gerald Segal

Market not anticipating competing bids for Knight Capital

Either 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…

November 28, 2012 BY Gerald Segal

Saxo Bank lays off 20% of workforce

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…

November 28, 2012 BY Gerald Segal

Will Hotspot FX need to find a new home?

Acquisition 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…

November 27, 2012 BY Gerald Segal

ICAP-EBS takes on FXall by adding relationship trading

EBS 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…