Forex Weekly Look Back: Andrey Dashin launches Exinity Group, ActivTrades expects record revenues in H1 2020

Steffy Bogdanova
June 26, 2020 10:00 am

Looking back at the most intriguing and popular industry news from the past week between 22th and 26th of June on LeapRate.

ActivTrades announced exclusively for LeapRate that they expect record revenues for the first half of 2020. LeapRate had a talk with CEO Alex Pusco on the topic. The start of 2020 has been rough for many due to the Coronavirus crisis, but for the online broker ActivTrades this has been the best start of the year in its history. So far, it seems that 2020 is going to be the broker’s most profitable year yet with first half profit surging to £18 million. Alex said that the Coronavirus pandemic helped boost the revenue more than three times compared to H1 last year, reaching £30 million.

Financial services provider INTL FCStone Inc. is rebranding to StoneX Group Inc. This was approved in a majority vote at the company’s shareholder meeting. The company will trade under the symbol SNEX, effective 6 July.

Global trade surveillance and risk management software provider, Eventus Systems, Inc. and INTL FCStone’s London-based subsidiary INTL FCStone Inc. set plans to expand their partnership. INTL FCStone will deploy the firm’s Validus platform for market surveillance activities throughout the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region.

Cboe FX Markets, institutional FX trading platform, announced its plans to launch Cboe FX Central, a new central limit order book (CLOB) for the FX market. Cboe FX Central is an all-to-all market with instantly executable liquidity in the order book. It is scheduled to launch on 29 June and will offer the most popular traded pairs in the spot FX market: EUR/USD, USD/JPY, GBP/USD, AUD/USD, USD/CAD, USD/CHF, USD/CNH.

MetaTrader 5 has collaborated with Cloudflare, an American web-infrastructure and website-security company, to enable DDoS protection and enhance network performance. With the Cloudflare Spectrum for brokers, disruptions caused by bad traffic are avoided, while good traffic is allowed through. Cloudflare’s global network covers over 200 cities and offers network capacity of over 35 Tbps.

Global forex broker HYCM announced the addition of over 50 cryptocurrency CFD pairs on its MT5 platform, expanding its crypto portfolio to satisfy an increasing demand in the trading of various crypto-to-fiat options. It has also drastically reduced its spreads for all cryptocurrency products. HYCM now offers pairs with Bitcoin, Bitcoin SV, Bitcoin Gold, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, Ripple, as well as EOS, Stellar, TRON, Dash, IOTA, Monero, Zcash and NEO, against fiat currencies, USD, EUR, GBP and JPY, thus providing traders with a rich choice for trading.

Andrey Dashin, founder of Alpari and FXTM, announced the launch of Exinity Group. Effective today, the Exinity Group will comprise the various retail businesses owned by Dashin which includes Alpari International, ForexTime (FXTM) and its soon-to-come new retail offering under the Exinity name.

Chief Executive Officer for investment platform iTrustCapital, Todd Southwick, joined LeapRate to discuss investing in gold. He has accumulated over 20 years of experience with startups. In his career, he has occupied key executive positions at several tech companies. In his interview Todd advised investors to max out their contributions to tax-advantageous accounts. He pointed out that “physical gold is an insurance policy”. Todd explained the cyclical nature of markets and that portfolio diversification can be beneficial in the current situation.

Financial service provider Swissquote reported increased trading activity in the first half of the financial year. As the fist months of 2020 were marked by increased market volatility, Swissquote’s trading platforms registered increase inflow of new customers driving the performance of the company up. Swisquote reported 40% growth in net revenues for the first half of the year and over 120% of pre-tax profit compared to the previous year.

Forex Weekly Look Back

The Italian Banking Association (ABI) has shown its willingness to support a digital currency from the European Central Bank. The ABI has approved official guidelines for governing a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). The Executive Committee of the ABI has agreed on ten fundamental criteria to issue the digital euro.

London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) announced new appointments to the board of its wholly owned subsidiary London Stock Exchange plc. The exchange appointed capital markets veteran Michael Findlay as non-executive chair of the London Stock Exchange. LSEG also noted the appointments of Nikhil Rathi as CEO of the FCA and Denzil Jenkins as interim CEO of London Stock Exchange plc.

Virtu Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ: VIRT), a financial services and technology provider, announced the promotion of Akiko Imai to Global Head of New Sales. Imai will also oversee global sales efforts for POSIT Alert and report directly to Brad Johmann, Global Head of Posit Alert and Stephen Cavoli.

Refinitiv’s commitment for electronification of the Malaysian FX market strengthened with the approval of its electronic trading platform FXall by the Bank Negara Malaysia under the country’s new framework for electronic trading platforms (ETP). Refinitiv FXall will be offered under the approved money broker “Refinitiv Transaction Services Malaysia Sdn Bhd.”

The Australian Securities and Investment Commission announced its civil penalty proceeding Federal Court of Australia against Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and CBA’s subsidiary, Colonial First State Investments Limited (CFSIL) regarding alleged conflicted remuneration paid by CFSIL to CBA. ASIC claims that between 1 July 2013 and 30 June 2019 CFSIL paid $22 million in conflicted remuneration to CBA for the distribution of Essential Super, a superannuation product issued by CFSIL. CBA distributed the Essential Super product resulting in approximately 390,000 individuals becoming members of the Commonwealth Essential Super fund under the arrangements.

Online FX and CFDs broker Admiral Markets announced its plans to raise €10 million (about $11.3 million) in additional capital. The broker stated its intentions to issue subordinated bonds, however it also pointed out that no definite decision was taken yet.

Gold surged to levels not seen in eight years during the week, surpassing the recent May peak, to trade above $1,770 as people look to spread out their investments across multiple asset classes. The precious metal rose by 25% in the last year, to hit levels not seen since 2012 and the height of the Eurozone crisis. Gold climbed despite the rapid recovery in stock markets, which has seen them bounce back from March lows to leave them on track for their best quarter in a decade. The S&P 500 climbed back to 3,131 points overnight, leaving it less than 10% below its record high of 3,393 set in February.

 

LeapRate Analyst

Experienced writer and journalist, working in the global online trading sector, Steffy is the Editor of LeapRate. She has previous experience as a copywriter and has been with the company since January 2020. Steffy has a British and American Studies degree from St. Kliment Ochridski University in Sofia.
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