Gerald Segal
LeapRate Analyst
February 11, 2014 BY Gerald Segal

Bank Vontobel chooses smartTrade LiquidityFX for its new FX offering

Swiss private bank Bank Vontobel is launching a new offering in Forex spot, forward and swaps. Institutional trading platform provider smartTrade Technologies has announced that Bank Vontobel, a Swiss private bank, will introduce a new offering in Forex trading for spot, forward and swaps to its clients based on smartTrade's LiquidityFX hosted solution. The platform includes…

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February 10, 2014 BY Gerald Segal

Leverate upgrades look and feel of its Sirix Mobile HTML5 platform

The Sirix Mobile upgrade includes improved charts with embedded indicators, and placing orders directly from charts. Mobile trading used to be a nice-to-have for forex and binary brokers, and not long ago moves to become a need-to-have. But most transactions still took place on desktops or tablets. But that is rapidly changing. As people worldwide do more…

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February 10, 2014 BY Gerald Segal

Gain Capital's record January sees more than $700 billion in volumes

Gain Capital (NYSE:GCAP) sees $212.5 billion retail and $494 billion institutional volume metrics in January. What a great start to the year for Gain Capital, which owns the Forex.com and Gain GTX brands. After seeing volumes disappoint somewhat during Q4 after Gain closed its acquisition of GFT -- sending its share price into a tailspin,…

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February 09, 2014 BY Gerald Segal

Bitcoin prices take another dive as Mt Gox halts BTC withdrawals

Mt Gox claims an 'increase in the flow of withdrawal requests has hindered our efforts on a technical level'. Leading Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox has (once again) halted Bitcoin withdrawals, after an increase in withdrawal requests led to (they claim) technical problems. Mt Gox had previously halted withdrawals several times, but quickly worked to have…

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February 09, 2014 BY Gerald Segal

Senior FX exec departures continue – Citi, Goldman Sachs, and now RBC

Canada's RBC Capital Markets sees Graeme King depart as co-head of FX spot trading. The revolving door continues to swing in the executive suites of major banks. Last week we reported on the departure of Anil Prasad, Citigroup Head of FX. Well the weekend has brought more changes, with Canada's largest bank RBC announcing that its co-head…

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February 07, 2014 BY Gerald Segal

FXall sees record forex volumes month in January

FXall's $123 billion ADV January included a $197 billion day, its highest tally ever. China volume record too. Looks like 2014 is getting off to a great start in the institutional forex world. After seeing ICAP's EBS platform climb 23% from December (although still well behind last year), Thomson Reuters' own Forex ECN platform as…

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February 07, 2014 BY Gerald Segal

ESMA tells EU brokers to crack down on sales practices to retail investors

ESMA particularly notes selling practices of complex financial products to retail clients. ESMA is continuing to throw its weight around, and establish itself as a to-be-taken-seriously pan-European rule setter in financial markets. What exactly is ESMA's role? While not technically a regulator -- each EU country has its own financial regulator (e.g. FCA in the UK,…

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February 07, 2014 BY Gerald Segal

Monex brings TradeStation to Korea via Shinhan partnership

Monex had recently launched TradeStation in Japan, its first deployment outside the US and Europe. It seems as though the braintrust at Monex has big Far East plans for TradeStation, which it purchased in 2011 for more than $400 million. The Japanese forex broker has announced that its TradeStation platform will soon be available to Korean…

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