March FX volumes at CME come in at 1.072M contracts per day, up 0.5% from 1.067M in February. CME Group, which runs the world's largest derivatives marketplace, surpassed a near-record February with a (slightly) even better March. FX contract volumes (mainly Eurodollar futures contracts) traded at CME hit 1,072,000 per day in March, up 0.5%…
Read moreCentral Bank of Cyprus has agreed to not haircut segregated bank accounts over €100,000, where the ultimate beneficiaries are small individual investors. LeapRate Exclusive... LeapRate has learned that Cyprus' financial regulator CySEC is working on behalf of licensed Cyprus investment firms, which include many FX and Binary brokers, to prevent the dreaded "haircut" on bank accounts…
Read moreGMO Click did $694 billion of spot FX volume in March, down 17% from record February volumes. FX volumes continued to be strong during March in Japan, as the global risk-on trade combined with local "Abe-nomics" to keep retail traders interested in the currency markets. However volumes were down somewhat from February. Japan's largest retail…
Read moreThe UK breaks the FSA into two parts – the FCA, and the PRA. The UK's Financial Services Act 2012 goes into effect today, (technically yesterday, April 1 2013, but it was the Easter Monday bank holiday in the UK), whereby the UK's financial regulator the FSA is being broken into two parts -- the FCA,…
Read moreSpotware Connect will help third-party app developers to easily build their own cTrader systems. The FX platform market is becoming increasingly about openness, and allowing third party developers to come out with best-of-breed add-ons, apps and applications for traders and brokers alike. Spotware Systems, which develops the leading FX ECN platforms cTrader and cAlgo (clients include…
Read moreSocial and copytrading platform provider Ayondo replaces top management. LeapRate Exclusive.... LeapRate has learned that Manuel Heyden has resigned from the the company he co-founded and headed as CEO, Ayondo. Based in Germany, Ayondo provides social and copytrading trading platforms to FX brokers such as AvaFX (a member of LeapRate's Approved List). Heyden will be replaced…
Read moreAustralia's smaller FX brokers are scrambling to offload market-making, to avoid higher capital charges. Australia continues to be one of the hottest FX markets out there. The country's Forex and CFD sectors continue to grow and -- more importantly -- Australia is an important base for attracting clients in fast growing Asian markets, specifically China.…
Read moreClaimed its software had shown positive returns on every trade it ever made. Did people actually believe that??? The CFTC has fined California-based Victor Yu his company VFRS a total of $3.2 million in a foreign currency fraud action. The order finds that Yu and VFRS misrepresented that they had developed trading software that made forex…
Read moreUnlike the original proposal, uninsured depositors will likely lose around 40% (not 10%) at Cyprus' two largest banks. The new (and seemingly final) Cyprus bailout agreed to Sunday night by senior Cyprus government officials, the EU and the IMF will see the complete wind-down of Laiki bank, the second largest bank in the country. The…
Read moreGain Capital is to (potentially) make only back-end payments to GFT, based on volume. LeapRate Exclusive.... Back at the beginning of December, when the Gain Capital-GFT deal was announced, we wrote that "we are fairly certain that very little money changed hands here, perhaps a couple of million dollars...". Well it turns out that even that…
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