Varlesi's Gold Coast Futures and Forex used just $220,000 of the $1.7M he accepted from clients to actually trade. The CFTC has obtained a federal court order against Christopher Varlesi of Chicago and his company Gold Coast Futures and Forex, requiring Varlesi to pay $1.3 million -- $638,000 to defrauded investors plus a $700,000 penalty. The…
Read moreSaxo Bank's Tour de Trading competition includes TV spots and Alberto Contador's actual Tour de France bike. In our latest in a series covering interesting and unique promotions in the forex trading world, we look this week at Saxo Bank, and its Tour de Trading promotion. Even among die hard cyclists and bicycle enthusiasts (including…
Read moreBitcoin trading on Mt Gox halted due to server problem. Adding to its woes of late, which include Mt Gox suspending US dollar withdrawals, leading Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox suffered several hours of downtime early Monday, following a server error. Mt Gox attributed the server problem --which they admitted 'should not occur' -- was due…
Read moreBitcoin prices have lost their wild volatility swings, encouraging more Forex and Binary brokers to think seriously about Bitcoin trading. Binary options broker SetOption has announced that it is launching Bitcoin trading for clients. Not much more information was given, other than that is will be BTCUSD trading. SetOption runs SpotOption's binary options trading platform. SpotOption…
Read moreRetail Forex industry volumes driven by ideal trading conditions -- a risk-on environment, volatility, and strong volumes in the Far East. LeapRate's Retail FX Volume Index, sponsored by Leverate, hit another all-time record in May, rising nearly 7% to $229 billion daily. Forex industry trading volumes continue to sit about 20%-25% above last year's levels.…
Read moreBitcoin exchange Mt Gox said it will likely be several weeks before US dollar withdrawals are back to normal. Leading Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox put out a detailed statement today, stating why the bank has temporarily suspended US dollar withdrawals from customer accounts. The full text of Mt Gox's statement follows, but essentially it boils…
Read moreIG Group spent several millions of dollars buying the IG.com domain name. IG Group's new website IG.com has now been officially launched (at www.ig.com, of course). We exclusively reported just several weeks ago that as part of its rebranding as just 'IG', IG Group had spent several million dollars buying the IG.com domain name, which…
Read moreJanno Teelem headed up product development teams for Apple-related products at Skype. Trading apps platform company Tradable has announced the hiring of a new Chief Product Officer, Janno Teelem. Teelem joins Tradable from Microsoft, where he headed the Mac engineering team for Skype products. Microsoft of course bought Skype from eBay for $8.5 billion in…
Read moreRetail forex trading among Swiss traders has dropped off since September 2011 cap was put in place, killing CHF volatility. The Swiss National Bank (Switzerland's central bank), in its periodical Monetary policy assessment, has announced plans to keep its CHF 1.20 per Euro cap in place, and will not allow the Swiss Franc to strengthen below…
Read moreCyprus (and other EU) Forex brokers are not just relying on MiFID, but are getting licensed separately in the UK. Two up-and-coming FX brokers, IronFX from Cyprus and Admiral Markets from Estonia, have separately announced that they have each received FCA authorization for their UK subsidiaries. (The FCA, of course, is the recently christened successor…
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