Last night The Daily Telegraph reported that British forex broker ODL Group Ltd. has "agreed on terms to be acquired" by FXCM Holdings LLC. It looks as though the new brand of the combined organization in Europe is going to be "ODL Powered by FXCM – Bigger, Better, Stronger"
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Following the formal announcement yesterday of FXCM's takeover of ODL I've been chatting to both companies about what to expect from the new larger group, which must now be vying for the position of largest retail forex broker on the planet. As we pointed out previously, the enlarged FXCM is still a long way from being the largest retail broker in the world per se, but the likes of Interactive Brokers deal in an awful lot more than just spot forex.
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For the last month FXCM have been busy migrating all the new customers they acquired when they took over UK broker ODL. I have now received several emails from ODL on the topic. The one I received on May 21st informed me that:
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Dukascopy have finally followed in the footsteps of MIG, and after a long wait they have at last received their banking licence from FINMA, the Swiss regulator. Consequently they now proudly call themselves "Dukascopy Bank SA". According to their press release:
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MetaTrader 5 has been in beta testing by traders around the world for well over 6 months now. In an indication that there might at last be a glimmer of light at the end of the long testing tunnel Alpari UK are now publicising the fact that you can download MetaTrader 5 from their website, and thus open an account with them. It's only a demonstration account at the moment of course. Alpari don't say when a real live MT5 account will be available from them. A few more months yet I suspect. Alpari do say this however:
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To celebrate the fact that forex broker Dukascopy have at last officially become a Swiss bank we have rewritten our first example robot to work on their JForex platform. Take a look at the JForex source code on our community forum.
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One of the drawbacks of MetaTrader 4 has always been that whilst you can write a multi-currency expert advisor for the platform, the MT4 strategy tester only allows you to backtest one currency at a time. Now that the bugs in the MetaTrader 5 strategy tester are gradually being removed, we're just starting to use it for some serious testing.
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The National Futures Association have made a couple of announcements recently that strongly suggest the number of US spot forex brokers and their associated introducing brokers are going to decline even further in the near future. Last week the NFA implied that the proposed new CFTC regulations about forex IBs are going to be implemented much as originally drafted. They pointed out that:
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A recent addition to the ranks of UK forex brokers has finally delivered something we've been waiting to see for a long time now here at the Trading Gurus. If you are a UK resident it is now possible to spread bet using MetaTrader 4 as your trading platform. You can now therefore use an MT4 expert advisor to automate your tax free forex trading, if you are so inclined.
More on Smart Live Markets Marry MetaTrader and Spread Betting
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FXCM started public beta testing of their new Strategy Trader trading platform back in March. They are positioning their new platform as a superior alternative to MetaTrader 4 and the forthcoming MetaTrader 5. They describe it as:
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