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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I suddenly find myself writing my second blog post of April 1st 2011, and this one is no joke either! I'm already a GFT spread betting customer here in the UK, but nobody from GFT called or emailed to give me this news. I heard a whisper on the grapevine and called my account executive who confirmed that I could indeed open a MetaTrader 4 account with GFT today, as long as I didn't mind parting with at least £150. I said I didn't, and so I am now the proud possessor of a brand new GFT MT4 account. I'm told if you're a GFT client anywhere else in the world you can do this too. Everybody else will have to wait for a few more weeks.
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GKFX are proud of their dealing desk and their fixed spreads. In this guest post Paul Hare, their Director of Trading, explains why. (Note that GKFX are a UK based broker, and are therefore regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA for short, and formerly the Financial Services Authority). Some of the regulatory points Paul makes don't work in quite the same way in other jurisdictions.)
More on Dealing Desk or No Dealing Desk – That is the Question!
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It's been an extremely busy week for Ray the Random Robot™, and he has undergone a number of cloning operations. First of all the MetaTrader 5 Automated Trading Championship 2010 finally got underway at midnight on Sunday, Moscow time. Ray's multi-currency MT5 clone started perfectly, but he has had some teething troubles with EUR/USD and has now slipped back to 273rd position out of 314.
More on Ray the Random Robot Successfully Starts Smart Live Spread Betting
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I was browsing around the Boston Technologies website yesterday for a very different reason, when I made an interesting discovery – the Boston Technologies History Center. As we reported recently, the historical data you can download into the MetaTrader 4 History Center seems to have developed some big gaps recently. If you're new to MT4 backtesting, or if you haven't been religiously logging in to your account regularly to keep your data up to date, this might well cause your backtest results to be rather misleading. This problem has affected the backtesting of some members of our Community, and they now have another solution to their difficulties apart from waiting for me to export some of my own data from MetaTrader!
More on Boston Technologies History Center Rescues MetaTrader Backtests
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A recent addition to the ranks of UK forex brokers has finally delivered something we've been waiting to see for a long time now here at the Trading Gurus. If you are a UK resident it is now possible to spread bet using MetaTrader 4 as your trading platform. You can now therefore use an MT4 expert advisor to automate your tax free forex trading, if you are so inclined.
More on Smart Live Markets Marry MetaTrader and Spread Betting
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Last night The Daily Telegraph reported that British forex broker ODL Group Ltd. has "agreed on terms to be acquired" by FXCM Holdings LLC. It looks as though the new brand of the combined organization in Europe is going to be "ODL Powered by FXCM – Bigger, Better, Stronger"
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Recently FXCM UK started allowing users of their proprietary Trading Station II platform to trade contracts for difference (CFDs) in a range of non forex instruments. Maybe they should change their name to CFDFXCM? The now misleading name aside, this allowed UK customers of FXCM to start trading gold, silver, oil and a range of stock indices from around the world.
More on FXCM Introduce Spread Betting on Indices, Metals and Oil
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London Capital Group Holdings plc are behind a considerable number of UK spread betting brokers, including Capital Spreads, ProSpreads, Dealing Desk and even Saxo Bank Financial Spreads. At the beginning of this week they issued their third profit warning. According to the Financial Times:
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Following on from its "no hedging" and first-in first-out rule changes, the National Futures Association in the United States will shortly impose further restrictions on the activities of its Forex Dealer Members (FDMs). In notice Notice I-09-18 dated September 24, 2009 the NFA informed brokers that:
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