Ray Robot II™ has now been running his live spread betting test comparing Alpari UK with GKFX for over a month. We're rather obsessive here at the Trading Gurus, and we've noticed a variety of interesting differences between Ray's four experimental accounts during that time. Some observers have however suggested to us that all that matters in a trading account is "the bottom line". Whilst we humbly disagree with that assertion, Ray is nonetheless now proud to announce that there is at last a difference between the bottom line of his Alpari accounts (currently standing at £255.00) and his GKFX accounts (currently standing at £261.00). There are any number of other (less significant?) differences also.
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Last weekend LMAX quietly announced to those of their customers carrying trades over the weekend that they were introducing what MetaTrader brokers refer to as micro-lots on their spot forex contracts. Whichever way you look at it, that title is something of a misnomer, but we'll explain what it means to a client of LMAX.
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Just over a year ago we reported that "Microsoft Enters Retail Forex". It now seems as though what with one thing and another that little (ad)venture didn't turn out as originally hoped. At that time I opened an MSN Trader account of my very own, but yesterday I received an email from saxobank.com informing me that:
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I've just received an email which says it's from "Todd Crosland, President, IBFX Australia Pty. Ltd.". The email starts off by saying that:
As you may have already seen in the recently issued press release, IBFX Holdings, LLC has been acquired by TradeStation Group, Inc., a recognized leader in online trading and winner of Barron's 2011 "Best Online Broker" award. TradeStation is part of Monex Group, a leading Japanese online brokerage firm.
According to the TradeStation press release that Todd mentioned in his email:
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We were just gearing ourselves up to gently launch Ray Robot II™ onto an unsuspecting world when Alpari UK announced that they had started offering MetaTrader 4 spread betting accounts. In contrast to some reports elsewhere on the web, here at the Trading Gurus we are well aware that automated spread betting via MT4 has been available for well over a year from another broker – the recently renamed GKFX. We figured we'd kill several birds with one stone by running RR2 in identical fashion on live accounts from both MT4 spread bet brokers. While we're at it we thought we'd also try him out on demo accounts from both brokers, to see if there is any noticeable difference between automated live trading and pretend trading at our small sample of MetaTrader brokers. Whilst we're at that we thought we'd also compare some backtest results with all those forward test results, to see whether that made any difference to the outcome(s).
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At last we know the answer to the questions posed by FXCM themselves back in August following settlement of charges brought by the NFA, when they revealed that:
FXCM has set aside a $16 million reserve for the…. anticipated CFTC settlement.
Yet again the CFTC have simultaneously:
More on FXCM Settles CFTC Charges For More Than $14.2 Million
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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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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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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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In a press release yesterday Saxo Bank announced that their ForexTrading.com web site not only provides some forex trading education. It now also allows you to trade spot forex and CFDs:
Saxo Bank, the online trading and investment specialist, today announced the launch of ForexTrading.com which will offer retail investors a select range of FX crosses and CFDs with variable spreads – as low as 0.8 pips.
Those spreads are not only variable, they are also significantly smaller than the spreads available to Saxo's existing retail clients through the SaxoTrader and WebTrader platforms. Here's a quick comparison between two demo accounts, with the new ForexTrading.com first:
More on Saxo Bank Relaunch ForexTrading.com as a Retail Forex Broker
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