First of all, here's a screenshot from FXCM's flavour of MetaTrader 4 on January 15th 2015 :
The cause of the big gap was the following announcement from the Swiss National Bank at 9:30 GMT this morning:
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Regular readers will recall that we reported back in 2011 that IBFX had been acquired by TradeStation, itself part of the Japanese Monex Group. Now it looks as though Monex has finished its brief excursion into MetaTrader land. I've received several emails announcing the news summarised in today's headline. According to FXCM's news release:
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In a press release today FXCM have announced that:
Its U.K. subsidiaries, Forex Capital Markets Limited and FXCM Securities Limited, [have] entered into a settlement with the Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA”). The settlement addresses trade execution practices concerning the handling of price improvements on FXCM UK’s offsetting orders from August 2006 – December 2010.
More on FXCM UK Fined £4 million by the Financial Conduct Authority
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In a news release yesterday FXCM announced that:
Its U.S. subsidiary Forex Capital Markets LLC has agreed to assume the forex accounts of Alpari US LLC.
On Friday, September 27, 2013, accepted Alpari U.S. accounts will be transferred to FXCM U.S. after the close of trading.
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Following our recent report that FXCM had made an unsolicited offer to acquire GAIN Capital it looked likely that the GAIN board weren't very keen on that prospect. That perception was confirmed this morning when I received an email signed:
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MultiCharts have just announced on their blog that they have introduced what they describe as:
The BEST currently available free trading software.
The MultiCharts hype machine goes on to say that:
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I received a message in my inbox this morning advising me that:
FXCM Proposes Acquisition of Gain Capital
According to the accompanying press release FXCM sent a letter to the members of GAIN's Board of Directors last night:
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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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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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