Forex Weekly Look Back: FXCM Group expands its Stock Basket offering, Exness named Damian Bunce its new Chief Trading Officer

Looking back at the most intriguing and popular industry news from the past week between 1st and 5th February on LeapRate.

Deutsche Börse AG announced that its General Counsel since 2018, Michael Lappe, will leave the company on 30 July. The move is at Lappe’s own request. He will continue to advise as an independent consultant. Bettina Kramer-Braun is going to take his place on 15 April.

The Russian market operator Moscow Exchange Group (MOEX) reported RUB 63.9 trillion in total trading volumes in January 2021, down by 29.2% MoM (RUB 90.2 trillion in December 2020). January saw decreases in all sections of the market, compared to the volatility, registered in December. Derivatives Market fell by 5.7% MoM, the FX Market followed with a 26.8% MoM drop. The Equities and Bonds Market was down by 35.6% MoM and the Money Market fell by 39% MoM.

Global Fintech company Broadridge Financial Solutions has announced the launch of its new Post-trade FastStart solution to help small and mid-tier brokerage firms access domestic and global markets faster and easier. FastStart is based on Broadridge’s global post-trade processing platform, widely used by major securities firms globally. It provides functionality tailored to the needs of small- and mid-tier firms.

Exchange holding company Cboe Global Markets, Inc. reported its January 2021 monthly metrics, with substantial uptick in trading volumes, compared to December and November. Cboe reported Options ADV up 48.1% MoM, Futures ADV were down slightly with 13% MoM. US Equities ADV jumped 84.8% MoM and Global FX ADNV increased by 4.8% MoM compared to December 2020.

CFI Financial Group continues to expand and improve its offering. The global trading provider announced that it has over 5,000 products available for trading and has added new markets – Hong Kong, The Netherlands and Spain. CFI has also introduced the Chinese Yuan and new crosses for Singapore Dollar, Norwegian Krone and Swedish Krona. The expansion remains part of the company’s vision of the brand and has promised new additions in 2021.

Derivatives marketplace CME Group released its monthly metrics for January 2021. The company registered average daily volume (ADV) of 19.2 million contracts for January with a 2% MoM increase, compared to the previous month when it was 18.9 million. CME Group’s monthly metrics highlights from January include Equity index of 5.6 million contracts, with 19% MoM increase since December, and Interest Rate of 8 million contracts with a 60% MoM rise.

The multibank FX streaming aggregation and a matching service provider FXSpotStream has appointed Antony Brocksom as SVP, Global Head of Sales and New Business. FXSpotStream continues to build its strong team with the promotion of Brocksom. Most recently, he served at the company as SVP, EMEA Head of Sales and New Business since April 2015 when he joined FXSpotStream. Prior to FXSpotStream, Brocksom was Product Manager at VoxSmart between December 2014 and April 2015.

FX technology provider Integral released its trading volumes across its trading platforms for January 2021 with a small decrease since December but steady growth on yearly basis. The company registered average daily volumes (ADV) of $45.8 billion in January. This represents 5.6% MoM fall compared to December 2020 when it reached $48.5 billion.

Retail FX and CFD broker FXCM Group announced expanding further its Stock Basket offering to customers. The broker had previously introduced a portfolio of Stock Baskets in May 2020 and now they are expanding this offering with the addition of seven new baskets. At the moment, FXCM offers six Stock Baskets to its retail clients. They include some of the most widely traded companies globally and are made up into the following: Big US Tech (“FAANG”), Esports & Gaming, Biotechnology, Cannabis, China Technology and China E-commerce.

Multi-asset broker Exness has named Damian Bunce as its new Chief Trading Officer. Bunce will focus on managing the Market Making and Liquidity Provider business as the group continues to develop and imporve its core brokerage function. Bunce brings over 25 years of experience in electronic trading at leading financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Barclays Capital and Sberbank CIB, and was a member of the board of management at Saxo Bank, overseeing its worldwide commercial activities.

Deutsche Börse published its monthly volumes report for January 2021. The volumes for last month increased, compared to December and on year-over-year basis. The company reported a 20.3% MoM rise in turnover with €181.9 billion in January 2021 (€151.2 billion for December 2020). The numbers are up by 25.2% YoY in comparison to January 2020 when it was €145.3 billion. €137.9 billion of the total turnover in January was attributable to Xetra with a 17% MoM increase, compared to the €117.9 billion in December.

The multibank FX streaming aggregation and a matching service provider FXSpotStream announced its January trading volumes. The company posted its second highest ADV ever of $49.036 billion. FXSpotStream reported increased 14.6% MoM increase in ADV for January 2021, compared to $42.8 billion in December 2020. On yearly basis, the company registered a 32.41% rise in ADV, compared to $37 billion in January 2020.

Finalto, formerly known as TradeTech has appointed Michael Bleys as VP Institutional Sales. Prior to this move, Bleys was VP Institutional Sales at CFH, now also under the banner of Finalto. He took up this role there in August 2018. Bleys joined CFH from Sucden Financial, where he spent over five years in the firm’s e-FX division. His career also includes five years at Saxo Bank in both London and Copenhagen where he was a Sales Trading Manager, and a year at Barclays Wealth and Investment Management as VP, FX Derivatives.

ASIC regulated Australia-based multi-asset trading provider ACY Securities has appointed Ashley Jessen as its Chief Operating Officer. Jessen joined ACY Securities in September 2019 as Head of Marketing. At that position, he was in charge of developing the digital marketing strategy, implementing performance-based marketing campaigns and identifying market opportunities.

Multi-asset prime brokerage and liquidity provider CFH has changed its name to Finalto following a rebranding of TradeTech Group. The company stated that that the new name was carefully selected to describe the vision of the business. The rebranding reflects the firm’s first step toward full integration and assimilation of the different companies that make up the group.

Edgewater Markets, a technology provider offering access to the FX markets globally, via back to front-end software solutions, announced today the launch of EdgeFXAsia powered by Edgewater Markets’ technology. The company hosts its ultra-low latency trading engine in TY3 FX data centre. Together with regional hosting of EdgeFXAsia, the HTML5 GUI developed by Edgewater Markets, clients can now connect locally to trade, eliminating significant latency issues that arise trading out of region.

Forex Weekly Look Back

Digital asset exchange Gate.io announced that it is the first major centralized exchange to list SNOW. according to a famous crypto trader, Elliot Wainman, SNOW could grow at least 1000%. On February 2, it reached an all-time high of $146.87. SnowSwap is a decentralized exchange which allows its users to swap wrapped, yield-bearing tokens with minimal slippage. Through the protocol, users can swap stablecoin tokens to get the most optimal LP (liquidity provider) yield across several decentralized liquidity pools and staking contracts like Yearn, Harvest, Curve, ETH2, WETH, etc.

TMGM announced an exclusive partnership with German tennis star, Alexander Zverev, ‘Sasha’. The CFD trading platform is also the official sponsor of The Australian Open tennis tournament. TMGM and Sascha will both donate to a local Australian charity for every ace that the German tennis player will hit during AO21. The announcement comes just days before the tournament kickoff on 8 February 2021.

United Fintech has entered the Market Data & RegTech space with the acquisition of German fintech, TTMzero. United Fintech has taken a 25% stake in the firm and indents to increase to 80% over the next three years. The acquisition is in line with the company’s strategy of acquiring and scaling innovative fintechs in capital markets and creating a fintech one-stop-shop which banks and financial institutions can benefit from to accelerate their transition to a digital world.

International investment and brokerage firm SquaredFinancial is backing individual and private investors by offering unrestricted access to trade GameStop. The stock became available for all SquaredFinancial traders on Monday. GameStop (GME – NYSE) is available to trade on the SquaredFinancial MT5 platform as a single stock CFD.

Software provider of eFX pricing solution DIGITEC announced the appointment of Peer Joost as COO. In the newly created role, Joost brings his vast expertise to boost the company’s product portfolio which consists of the D3 pricing engine for FX Swaps, NDFs and Forwards as well as the DIGITEC / 360T Swaps Data Feed (SDF). Joost will oversee all business operations and report directly to the CEO, Hans-Jürgen Joost.

Financial software development company Devexperts has partnered with Turkish Investment companies, TEB Yatırım Menkul Değerler A.Ş.(TEB Investment), to develop and deliver 4 proprietary products to modernise their trading software infrastructure. The development of four parts is already underway: a new Mobile Application, an Order Management System (OMS), a FIX gateway and a Web Admin Panel.

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