The CFTC final rules on the regulation of retail foreign exchange have now been officially published in the Federal Register. At the same time they have also authorized the NFA "to process and grant applications for initial registration, renewed registration and withdrawals of retail foreign exchange dealers (RFEDs) and their associated persons (APs)", effective from September 10th.
More on NFA Starts Registering Forex Brokers and "Solicitors"
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If you've been following the story about the new CFTC regulations regarding retail forex in the United States you may well have come to the conclusion that for some reason the CFTC thinks "on-exchange" trading is better than "off-exchange" (OTC) trading. Last year the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME for short) introduced smaller currency futures contracts designed to provide an exchange traded product that might appeal to the retail forex trader.
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The Chicago Mercantile Exchange announced earlier in the summer that following the expiry of the September 2010 contracts, e-micro currency futures contracts would change to being physically delivered:
CME FX will be migrating the E-micro Forex futures contracts from being cash settled to physically delivered. The December contract will be listed for trading on Sunday, July 25 (trade date Monday, July 26). This will enable active traders to carry larger positions in the E-micros and easily offset them with our standard size FX contracts – potentially generating more liquidity and tighter spreads in the E-micro Forex futures contracts.
Most of those September contracts expire today (USD/CAD does so tomorrow), and so from now on all e-micro currency futures contracts will involve physical delivery instead of cash settlement. CME explain the difference between cash settlement and physical delivery as follows:
More on CME E-micro Currency Futures Now Physically Delivered
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In a flurry of press releases FXCM have just (re)launched their new Strategy Trader trading platform. The headline reads:
FXCM Strategy Trader Delivers the Next Evolution in Automated Trading.
Despite this their Strategy Trader home page (now retitled "Automated Forex Trading") is still at pains to point out that:
More on FXCM Launch Strategy Trader Automated Forex Trading Challenge
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As anticipated I received an email from FXCM last night, but it did seem just a touch impersonal. It started out by saying:
Dear Trader:
Code and Compete for a chance to win cash prizes in the FXCM Automated Trading Challenge. Sign up for a contest demo and put your automated strategy to the test with zero risk to your own money.
A bit further on it posed this rhetorical question:
More on Trading Gurus Random Robot Enters the Dukascopy JForex Strategy Contest
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I've just received an email from Alpari (US) informing me that they will be demonstrating a new retail FX Options platform at the Las Vegas Futures and Forex Expo at the end of this month, where Alpari are the "platinum" sponsor. It seems the new platform is being provided by FX Bridge Technologies, and is presumably a white label flavour of their ProTrader Plus platform.
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We burned a lot of midnight oil here at the Trading Gurus last night trying to make sure our shiny new multi-currency upgrade to Ray the Random Robot™ wouldn't fall at the first hurdle in MetaQuotes entry into the 2010 Great Object-Oriented Robot Wars (GOORW for short). The deadline for entries into the MetaTrader 5 Automated Trading Championship 2010 is later on today. At least that's what we thought when we finally got to bed! This morning we awoke somewhat later than usual, only to discover that MetaQuotes have just extended that deadline:
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In the first of our series of interviews with senior figures from the Forex industry following the release of the final version of the new CFTC regulations, I spoke yesterday with Daniel Skowronski, recently installed Chief Executive Officer of Alpari (US) as well as Chief Commercial Officer of the Alpari Group. Daniel was also Managing Director of Currenex before moving to Alpari. I started off asking the question on everyone's lips these days about the effect of the new regulations on retail forex in the US, including their impact on introducing brokers. We then went on to discuss Alpari's plans to broaden the range of it's product offerings, whilst also expanding into new areas of the globe.
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In the second in our series of interviews with senior figures from the Forex industry following the release of the final version of the new CFTC regulations, I spoke yesterday with Jason Rogers, FXCM's Brand Ambassador to online communities. I started off asking my standard $64,000 question at the moment about the effect of those new regulations on the forex industry. I asked numerous other questions too, many of which Jason was compelled to answer with "no comment" because of restrictions imposed by FXCM's forthcoming Initial Public Offering. Despite that you will be able to read about FXCM's views on a few other topics of the moment below.
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Ray The Random Robot
Only a few short days ago we took the momentous decision to enter several automated trading competitions simultaneously. We've been burning numerous barrels of midnight oil here at Trading Towers ever since, and for the second time in as many weeks late last night we managed to successfully shoehorn some of the dumbest trading technology ever invented into our old friend Ray the Random Robot™. Then we managed to get him entered into another automated trading contest at the very last moment.
More on Ray the Random Robot Scrapes Into MetaTrader 5 Trading Championship
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