Last October we wondered what steps the CFTC would be able to take to enforce the new forex trading regulations that had just come into force, particularly when it came to pursuing offshore brokers in offshore courts. Back in January they sued a few brokers using the US courts. Now they have used a different approach, which still hasn't required the CFTC to state their case in a foreign jurisdiction. It seems all they need to do is to ask nicely for some money!
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AlgoTrader today announced a new open source algorithmic trading platform. AlgoTrader is an automated trading system that can trade any type of security on any market available through Interactive Brokers and/or the FIX protocol (real soon now!). All aspects of trading such as obtaining market data, analyzing prices, taking trade decisions, placing orders & tracking executions can be automated. The new platform uses the Esper complex event processing engine, and is based on Java SE 6.0, Spring, and a Model Driven Architecture.
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Fresh from having their UK subsidiary fined by the CFTC earlier this month, FXCM have now been fined $2 million by the National Futures Association. Once again the complaint against FXCM and their CEO Drew Niv and details of the agreed settlement have been published simultaneously. Once again FXCM neither admit nor deny the allegations in the complaint, which concern FXCM's failure to pass on positive slippage from their liquidity providers to their customers, and lapses in their anti money laundering procedures. However this time around FXCM's customers do stand to benefit financially since one of the agreed sanctions states that:
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Yesterday evening customers of UK spreadbet and forex/CFD broker Smart Live Markets received an email announcing that:
Smart Live Financial Services Ltd will be changing its name in the coming weeks to GKFX Financial Services Ltd.
According to the email:
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My attention has recently been drawn to an academic research paper entitled High Frequency Trading and The New-Market Makers. The author, who is from the VU University in Amsterdam, investigates the connection between high frequency trading and the emergence of new exchanges here in Europe:
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At the request of one of our loyal readers we've just opened up a new section on the Trading Gurus community forum devoted to Artificially Intelligent Trading. As other loyal readers will know, here at the Trading Gurus we love Ray the Random Robot and his particular brand of Artificially Stupid Trading. However we're also very open minded, not to mention modest! Apart from anything else we're keen to discover how other sorts of "robots" go about earning their keep. Some interesting debates have already started on the forum, where Pippa has recently revealed some very interesting news.
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Fresh from agreeing a settlement with FXCM's UK subsidiary, the CFTC has stepped up its campaign in the courts against "unregistered" RFEDs by announcing that it is bringing civil actions against another 11 foreign currency firms. As in their first such sweep a number of those firms are based in far away places such as Belize, the British Virgin Islands and Cyprus. However two names stand out in the CFTC's blacklist of miscreants as being more "onshore" than the others, namely:
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Following on from last month's European attack on the City of London a new front has opened up in the war currently being waged to regulate away risk in the world's financial markets. However this time around Britain is fighting back in the courts! Bloomberg reports that:
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As a couple of our more perceptive readers have recently pointed out to me, Ray the Random Robot's equity curve (the live version of which you can see proudly displayed to the left of this post) has recently suffered an obvious "blip". Here's an enlarged version of where Ray's up to today, preserved for posterity:
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According to Michael Greenberg over at ForexMagnates his:
Sources reveal that Gain Capital is about to seal the deal with Interbank FX. No information is yet known and neither company confirmed the information – naturally because Gain is a public company. More details are expected soon.
We have speculated here on the likelihood of continuing consolidation in the retail forex "industry", particularly following the IPOs of GAIN and FXCM. No doubt the trend will continue for a while yet in the wake of regulatory changes, not to mention the activities of those regulators' lawyers! In all the circumstances it's an interesting coincidence that we mentioned IBFX in passing only this morning. Assuming that the acquisition goes ahead as Michael suggests, perhaps Forex.com will eventually start marketing EAs that don't work terribly well to their customers too? They do operate a dealing desk after all!
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