Alpari (US) to Offer Vanilla FX Options
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.
Alpari have already branched out from OTC forex into exchange traded futures using the Ninja Trader and Strategy Runner platforms, and the new options platform will allow them to offer a more complete portfolio of currency products to their customers. Note that Alpari's forthcoming FX options are not the simple binary options that have been more common in retail forex up to now, these are "exchange style" (but presumably not exchange traded!) vanilla options of the sort familiar to stock and futures traders. According to Alpari:
[Vanilla] options can provide more trading and risk management strategies than spot trading. Options trading and risk management strategies can be customized for high volatility, low volatility, bullish, bearish, neutral – virtually any market conditions.
The new platform supports a range of common option strategies including spreads, strangles, and straddles. It also incorporates a strategy optimizer which:
Efficiently displays the top 10 strategies based on rate of return. You merely plug in the currency, the target, the time-frame and the approximate risk capital and the results are graphed for you.
FX Bridge suggest that:
One of the big complaints of Retail FX customers is their only risk management tool is stop orders and even when they are right about the directional move of the market they frequently lose money because they keep getting stopped out.
It remains to be seen whether Alpari's retail forex customers will prefer to use FX options in the manner FX Bridge envisage, or whether instead they will try to get rich quick by buying cheap options and then crossing their fingers!
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Comments on Alpari (US) to Offer Vanilla FX Options
Alpari (US) have issued a press release this morning which adds a bit of additional information. According to their CEO Daniel Skowronski:
“Having access to FX Options along with traditional spot FX symbols from one margin account within the same trading platform will give our clients greater flexibility to manage their trading strategies and risk exposure. FX Bridge offers extremely innovative solutions for both our clients and our back office operations, which supports Alpari’s role as a technological pioneer in the FX industry.”
I presume the new FX Options platform will also give folks the flexibility to use a "buy cheap options and cross fingers" strategy!
Jim
Unfortunately they cancel all winning option trades at their own will, so if you lucky enough, you get nothing, if you are unlucky – guess what.
Hi Unhappy,
Option trades do have a tendency to end that way. Vanilla option buyers more often that not do lose their entire "stake". However you seem to be implying that you have suffered losses that go beyond that "industry norm".
Can you be more specific?
Cheers,
Jim
You mean industry tendency is to separate customers from their profits?:) Alpari-us cancelled all in-the-money options after expiration date returning just premium paid and providing miserable explanations. I am currently in dispute with them and will post full details in the middle of this week in case they decide not to return money they have taken out of my account.