FXCM Ventures: The First FX and CFD Business Accelerator

Despite being hugely profitable, the forex trading market is a relatively stagnant one in terms of innovation and technology development. This is why I was super excited when I found out that FXCM, one of the largest and most reliable brokers around the world, is launching a new project: FXCM Ventures.

As you might have guessed from its name, the project will focus on investing in financial and forex startups.

FXCM Ventures will be led by Jacqueline Johnson, who gave an extensive interview about the project to forexmagnagtes.com. In it, Ms. Johnson shares that it is FXCM’s goal to partner up with startup companies and offer them funding and marketing and general forex industry insights in return for the startups’ expertise in technology. FXCM believes that in the long run, this will add to the broker’s core business.

A team of top senior executives, including the heads of IT and Marketing, will jump in to support FXCM Ventures and help it develop.

The startups that have the biggest chances of attracting FXCM Venture’s attention are ones that promise strong management and clear edge over their competitors. The new division will be seeking companies in their start and growth stages; of course, these should have a strong focus on the forex and CFD’s (contracts for difference).

In order to be approved for funding, the startups must demonstrate the ability to attract new customers and offer products/services that enhance FXCM’s customers’ experience. Funding will range between $100,000 and $1,000,000 per company, and (obviously) startups offering cost-efficient solution with a lower risk will be preferred.

“In addition to the capital investment, the primary benefit for a company to work with FXCM Ventures is because of our ability to allow them to tap into our position as an industry leader. This includes working directly with top executives who have built FXCM into the global leader, as well as gaining access to FXCM’s contacts and technologies and gaining exposure to our client base, which is one of the largest in the industry. Leveraging FXCM’s reputation and networks this will give companies a critical advantage, and it is those resources which we believe make FXCM a better strategic partner than receiving financing through traditional sources that cannot add the depth of industry expertise that FXCM can”, said Ms. Johnson.

FXCM Ventures is already accepting proposals at www.fxcmventures.com.

ZuluTrade: The Place to Trade Signals

ZuluTrade is a social trading platform, created with the goal of enabling traders to share their expertise and trading strategies with the less experienced traders. Six years after it was found, ZuluTrade seems to have achieved its intended purpose as today it is one of the most popular platforms for trading signals.

Supported Brokers

ZuluTrade works with a significant number of brokers; here is a full list:

Commissions & Fees

• For the leaders: signal providers get 0.5 pips for each traded lot of their signals.
• For the followers: depending on the broker, through which the followers trade Zulutrade signals, they pay commissions of up to 3.2 pips per standard lot. The broker that charges no commission for the trading the signals is AAAFx, and brokers like FXCM, Forex.com, MIG Bank, Dukascopy, FXOpen, FXDD, FX Solutions and AvaFX charge commissions of less than a pip.

Getting paid for providing signals is a good incentive for leaders to provide quality tips and attract more followers. Yet, with the growing popularity of social trading, more and more providers offer signal following for free – take Tradeo and Myfxbook for example, or broker-specific networks like IBFX Connect.

Leader Ranking

ZuluTrade signal providers are ranked based on a complex set of criteria, including maturity (how long a system has been running for), exposure (how many positions might be open at the same time), drawdown (how many ups and downs the system has experienced) and reliability (regular trading activity, consistent earnings per trade). Another social network with strict leader ranking requirements is FXSTAT.

A downside to this ranking system is that is 100% computer generated so it won’t give you a pep-talk when you need one (ah, the human factor) – and it will have no regard of human prospective on strategy preferences.

Apart from the rank, followers can also review the profiles of the leaders, where there are details about the latter’s profit, number of followers, winning trades, as well as graphs on profit, performance, slippage, etc. The best thing is that followers can rate signal providers and this info is recorded in the profiles.

Overall Impression

As I already mentioned, ZuluTrade is one of the most popular platform for trading signals. What I like about it is the handy economic calendar, the fact that they provide multi-lingual support via phone, email and live chat, and the signal provider ratings that followers can leave.

Another benefit of ZuluTrade is that is has been on the market for about 6 years and during that time it has managed to attract many users – so there’s a wide choice of signal providers. Broker variety is also quite good so even the pickiest traders should be able to find a combination to their taste.

The Traddr.com Social Trading Network Gets $1.2 Million for New Offices and R&D

Traddr.com, a start-up social trading platform, recently closed a $1.2 million round of Angel Funding. It took the site a few years to get there but it made it and can now open offices in New York City and Los Angeles. Along with that, the money will also be utilized for further expanding and development of the platform.

“We are grateful for the opportunity to expand our vision for traddr.com,” says Roger Carter, CEO of the company. “With this infusion of capital we will create what will no doubt be a disruptive application for traders to communicate and share ideas in the age of social media.”

Started in January 2009, Traddr.com is not as young as other networks for social trading, such as FX Junction or Tradeo; however it offers to its 2,000+ members a lot more features and capabilities for in-depth analysis of their trades. Amongst the other features of the platform are the live chat, extensive user profiles, apps, blogging modules, integration with Twitter, RSS, video publishing, RSS, etc.

Even at this point, Traddr.com seems to be the only real equivalent of Facebook for forex trading and most of the other social trading networks can’t compare – so I can imagine how much better it will get after the infusion of $1.2 million.

Back in March this year, another social trading network got a capital injection: eToro received fresh funding of $15 million from Spark Capital. At that point, eToro was already growing rapidly and nowadays the network services over 2.75 million users in more than 140 countries worldwide. When releasing the news about the funding, Santo Politi, General Partner at Spark Capital, expressed his hope that eToro would disrupt the financial service world, and that it would reinvent the way forex traders interact online. Today we can see the forex trading scene changing rapidly, with its social aspect growing stronger and stronger as we speak.

While the financial injection of Traddr.com is in no way comparable to the $15 million eToro got, we should not forget that Traddr began with a tiny budget and grew in spite of that – so I am positive that $1.2 million will get them far ahead from where they stand now.

Forex Scammer in Litigation After Soliciting for over $700,000 in closed Dukascopy Account

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) just announced that on September 12, 2012, Judge James D. Whittemore of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida entered an emergency order freezing the assets of defendant William Jeffery Chandler of Ft Myers, Florida, USA. Poor Mr. Chandler is also prohibited of getting rid of his records, and he isn’t allowed to doctor them either.

CFTC accuses Chandler of soliciting more than six people to contribute at least $773,100 to a pooled account for the purpose of forex trading via his Dukascopy Bank account. Allegedly, all this started in July 2010 and continues to date. It is suspected that in July 2011, when Dukascopy cut off US customers, Chandler’s account balance was $292.49. Ouch.

This is where things get really entertaining, though: when Dukascopy Bank withdrew from the US market due to regulatory reasons, Chandler’s account was transferred to Alpari US LLC with its outstanding balance of $292.49 (allegedly). This didn’t stop Mr. Chandler from soliciting, though – apparently, he continues to receive money to trade with Dukascopy – long after the account was in fact closed.

I have to say I feel for Chandler – it’s not his fault that there are people out who (a) have available resources, and (b) don’t know how to use Google. The morons feeding the pool (or rather “fool”) account took Chandlers word for the location of their funds – he kept assuring them the money is in his account with Dukascopy and made up excuses when the pool participants asked for their money. Seriously – why would you give someone any money to invest on your behalf before running a background check?!

- Hey, Google, does Dukascopy accept US clients?
– Uhm, no.
– Thanks, Google!

Honestly, anyone dumb enough to skip that part just deserves to be scammed.

But back to William Chandler, who – by the way – has never been registered with CFTC. In the continuing litigation process, the latter is seeking for civil monetary penalties, restitution, rescission, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, trading and registration bans, and preliminary and permanent injunctions against further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations – CFTC believes him to have misappropriated the vast majority of the pool’s money for personal use and is now looking for justice and payback.

Forex trading is a lucrative activity and I see how anyone with disposable funds would want to get involved in it. What I don’t get is why you would trust someone without checking their credentials and keeping a close eye on your investment. Or is it just me who thinks that it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there?

cTrader Teams Up with Sucden Financial To Expand Its Liquidity Providers Pool

Spotware Systems, the company behind the cTrader ECN platform, recently signed Sucden Financial as its newest liquidity provider. All forex brokers supporting the cTrader platform (for example FxPro, FIBO Group, Trader’s Way, etc.) can now stream liquidity for over 60 currency pairs from Sucden Financial.

cTrader is a popular ECN platform that offers outstanding execution, user-friendly interface and a number of features such as one-click trading (which makes it ideal for scalpers). It is available as a desktop application and a browser-based version. Along with Sucden Financial, the platform offers liquidity from Advanced Markets, CityFXPro, LMAX, Boston Prime, and TopFX.

As reported on forexmagnates.com, the CEO of cTrader Andrey Pavlov made the following comment on the new co-operation:

“Our strategy is to have a wide range of partners and FIX adapters in order to offer our clients fast and reliable executable liquidity in the most efficient way possible. We selected Sucden Financial as they are internationally recognised as delivering fast, deep liquidity with competitive pricing. They have a compelling offering, backed up with a strong history of supplying to the E-FX trading markets.”

Jonathan Brewer, Head of E-FX Business Development at Sucden Financial, said:

“Our new partnership with cTrader provides a great opportunity for Sucden Financial to gain wider exposure in the market. We pride ourselves on our ability to offer the tightest spreads and this external endorsement from Spotware Systems reinforces our position as a reliable and established liquidity provider, with truly competitive pricing.”