Waiting for me in my inbox this morning was an email from OANDA informing me that:
The OANDA team is pleased to announce the launch of Contract for Difference (CFD) trading on the OANDA platform.
That was sufficient to persuade me to fire up fxTrade, which duly invited me to add some new symbols to my list. Having done so, this is what my quote window now looks like:
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WorldSpreads are (or perhaps I should say were?) an AIM listed spread betting broker, famous in this part of the world for offering "zero spreads" on some popular instruments as long as you sent them £5000 up front. This morning their website has taken on a whole new look. After an obviously hasty redesign over the weekend it now says:
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Earlier this week LMAX (who have now started to refer to themselves as LMAX Exchange instead of LMAX Trader) quietly started allowing existing customers to trade on their multilateral trading facility using MetaTrader 4, but they're not advertising that fact!
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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.
More on Ray Robot Makes More Money Spread Betting with GKFX than with Alpari
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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:
More on Microsoft Exits Retail Forex – MSN Trader Reverts to Saxo Bank
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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).
More on Ray Robot II™ Spread Betting Live Test – Alpari UK versus GKFX
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It's been quite a long wait, but Alpari UK have announced today that they are now the second broker to offer automated spread betting using the MetaTrader 4 platform to UK residents. According to their news release:
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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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