eToro continues to innovate with CopyTrader, a new function in the OpenBook social networking platform. CopyTrader allows a user to follow other successful traders on the eToro social network. This is a bold move by eToro — they are one of the first brokers in my knowledge to allow such a feature. Social networking is here to stay and those who embrace it will come out ahead. There are several players who are leading the social networking/trade following aspect in the forex markets— we’ll analyze 3 of them today for our readers. More here …

The IBTimes Trading Awards results fall into two major areas:

• Qualitative rankings: recognizing brokers by client satisfaction at the continent and country level
• Panel of experts: based on the judges’ proven expertise

Qualitative rankings were further divided into five voting sub-categories: Trading Platform, Forex Execution, Customer Service, Funding Department and Education.

This year’s winners include: Alpari UK, Ava FX, FXDD, FX Open, GFT, GO Markets, HY Markets, IBFX, MB Trading, Oanda, Tadawul FX, TFIfx and VantageFX.

The top firm in each sub-category, continent and country received a Best Broker Award, the 2 runner-up firms were honored with an Excellence Award.

The scores were first collected through votes on IBTimes.com, winners were subsequently selected by a panel of judges from IBTimes’ editorial team as well as independent experts from Forex Magnates, a highly acclaimed Forex Website.

The full results to the 2011 IBTimes Trading Awards can be viewed at the official awards website: http://www.ibtimes.com/awards/trading-awards-2011/

About Forex Magnates

Forex Magnates is managed by Michael Greenberg a highly acclaimed Forex Expert. Forex Magnates covers both the institutional as well as the retail sides of the Forex Industry. www.forexmagnates.com

About the IBTimes Trading Awards

The IBTimes Trading Awards builds on the successes of last year’s Awards, the 2010 FX Traders’ Choice Awards. They were awarded based on the votes of IBTimes’ readers collected by Forex DataSource, a Forex market research firm. The goal of the FX Traders’ Choice Awards was to empower traders with reliable information and help them select reputable brokers, as traders decided the winners.

This year, The 2011 IBTimes Trading Awards continues to give public recognition to those brokers and financial service providers while increasing the scope of the awards to cover all major asset classes including Stocks, Futures and Options. The awards also reflect The International Business Times’ global identity and include votes on financial service providers from around the world that provide services in multiple languages.

More info…

Why did you develop and launch MT5? Many estimate that this is your take on the stocks/indices/futures markets after you conquered the whole forex market and that is why it was rumored to be priced at $500k and when acceptance wasn’t satisfying the pricing changed to the MT4 levels, is that so?

Well, one of the reasons for developing MetaTrader 5 was our desire to expand into new markets. Now we are actively working in this direction and cooperate with some stock exchanges. This is not a fast process, because not everything depends on us. But we are moving forward.

The second reason was that we knew that a platform better than MetaTrader 4 could be created. However, it was impossible to implement new functions within the architecture of the old platform. Therefore, we, as always, started to develop a new platform from scratch. This approach implies a long development process, but it gives you a free hand, and you can implement almost anything you want.

As for the rumors about the price of the platform, they have nothing to do with reality. We haven’t changed the prices, and we have never planned to cut them. Moreover, we think these prices are probably low and we are now discussing the idea of raising the price of MetaTrader 5.

Can you disclose some details about MT5′s pricing and number of servers sold so far? Can you also specify how many MT4 systems have you sold so far, how many brokers are using the MT4 (this is something everyone in the market would really like to know)?

As I’ve said, we want to revise the prices of the MetaTrader 5 platform. Therefore I wouldn’t like to disclose them, because they may become invalid in a few months. As for our clients, we have sold MetaTrader 5 to more than 50 companies in one year. And over 400 MetaTrader 4 platforms have been sold in 6 years. (That’s 400 different clients, there are many more servers than that as each brokers has White Labels, Franchises, IBs, etc  - MG).

What differentiates MT5 from MT4?

Many people think that since the terminals of MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 are similar, the platforms are also similar. But this is wrong. These are two different platforms. There are a lot of minor details and some conceptual differences.

First of all, the platforms are based on completely different trading systems. MetaTrader 5 uses a system adopted by exchanges. Secondly, MetaTrader 5 is based on a new architecture, which provides greater flexibility and productivity. New automated trading with MQL5 is much more powerful than its predecessor, but unfortunately it is not compatible with MQL4. MetaTrader 5 also offers absolutely new mobile trading. If we go into the details, we’ll just get a huge article, or even a series of articles. So let’s leave it at that.

I saw you release MT5 for iPhone, are you planning on doing the same or are the new developments are aimed only at MT5?

Yes, it’s just one of those differences of MetaTrader 5 from MetaTrader 4. The old platform includes a good mobile trading. However, this market is strongly dependent on the market of mobile devices, which has changed dramatically. The rather good Windows Mobile has been replaced by the even better iOS and Android OS. Therefore, we are developing our mobile terminals specifically for these mobile platforms.

We are going to make MetaTrader 5 mobile terminals even more functional than the MetaTrader 4 Mobile. Increased functionality and performance of mobile devices provide greater freedom, and we want to use it all, to provide traders with maximum opportunities. Of course, all this will be available only to MetaTrader 5 users. Further development of mobile trading for MetaTrader 4 is not planned.

What are your future plans for Metaquotes? Do you intend to organically develop the platform further or do you intend to start acquiring competitors or other vertical acquisitions (like bridge providers, MT development firms, etc)?

Our next plans include further development of our trading platforms and expansion to the Exchange. From our point of view, there is still enough work to do.

What do you think of the rising popularity of MT4/MT5 bridges and bridges firms? Why don’t you develop a bridge of your own?

Popularity is an excellent indicator of demand. That is why we do create bridges – we have created our own bridge for MT5.

David Smith pleads guilty to a $220 million forex ponzi scheme

It was one of my first posts here on Forex Magnates almost two years ago! And now this case is close to completion.

David Smith from notorious Olint (an alleged forex Ponzi scheme which bilked investors out of hundreds of millions) was linked to I Trade, a former US forex broker. In September 2010 David Smith was extradited to the US and indicted with four counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and 18 counts of money laundering to conceal specified unlawful activity. The US authorities are also seeking to seize US$128-million which they claim Smith gained through wire fraud.

more …

Trader Explorer is the name of the new tool from Forex Factory.View a sample Explorer or create your own.

Broker platforms leave much to be desired in regard to analyzing your trading performance. Most traders don’t know basic performance statistics about their trading, such as average trade return, Sharpe ratio, and maximum drawdown, and it’s rare that a trader even knows what their equity curve looks like. It’s hard to improve if you don’t know where you stand.

Forex Factory has indeed just become a bigger monster. As they venture deeper into the realms of the social aspect of forex, apart from being just a forum (albeit a very big one),  other forex social websites will probably be quaking in their boots.

Currently Explorer is only compatible with MetaTrader4-based brokerage accounts. Forex Factory plans to incorporate other platforms in the future.

more here

I’ve finally put my hands on FXDD and Advanced Market’s numbers and can now post the full and complete report (only thing still lacking is number of FXDD’s accounts in Q3 but that doesn’t really change anything).

All I can say is – God knows how do Advanced Markets survive in this market or why do they continue being registered as RFED. It seems the number of their retail clients is dismal – a total of 58 in Q4 while their profitability has steadily decreased from 50% in Q1 2010 to 22% in Q4 2010. Advanced Markets also registered the biggest drop in profitability QoQ – whopping 13%, however just like in IG Markets case this number doesn’t really mean much when you have less than 100 clients.

FXDD on the other hand has a more significant presence in the US than I imagined making it 6th largest retail forex broker in the US in terms of number of accounts.

You may also notice that Oanda’s numbers have slightly changed (profitability decreased from previous report two weeks ago). For unknown reason they seem to have edited their numbers (and of Q3 as well). Oanda still leads by far in terms of account profitability however this may change in the next report as NFA has recently clarified how the account profitability should be calculated: reports from now on won’t include dormant accounts which were paid interest thus making them profitable (more on this here). I know for a fact that many brokers were unhappy with Oanda’s numbers and I can only speculate that some of them asked NFA for ‘clarifications’ on this issue – hence the new ruling.

Total number of active accounts in the US at Q4 2010 was 152,053. Add to that ‘dormant’ accounts and you probably get around 200,000. You are welcome do deduce how many active retail forex accounts there are worldwide but I’d put them anywhere between 1 and 1.5 million. Recently I’ve had many inquiries from interested parties who are looking for this ballpark figure for various reasons and for the first time they have a credible (and official) figure to rely on when making their assumptions.

Table is now sorted by profitability. Enjoy.

from here

Investors took an especially bearish view on the Dollar, in the months leading up to the expansion of the Fed’s Quantitative Easing Program QE2, precipitating a rapid and steep decline against most currencies. Analysts argued that QE2 would be ineffective in the short-run and inflationary in the long-run, and that most of the new cash would be invested abroad.
The Dollar has rallied strongly, since the unveiling of QE2. Most economists remains skeptical that it will do much to lift GDP and boost employment. However, a parallel thread holds that this was only the ostensible motive for QE2, and that the real motive was to prevent the outbreak of another financial crisis and consequent economic downturn.

While the stock market rally has stalled, the rise in Treasury Yields has not. The 10-Year rate is close to 3% for the first time in months, making it more attractive (and less costly) to hold capital in Dollar-denominated assets. The Dollar was helped by the release of GDP data for Q3, during which the US economy beat expectations and grew by 2.5%.

Analysts have revised their forecasts to reflect a stronger Dollar, based on the notion that “The dollar has found a bottom.” To be sure, there may be other reasons for the Dollar’s rally, namely the growing turmoil in the EU. Evidence is mounting that the EU sovereign debt crisis is spreading, which has spurred both an increase in investor risk aversion and a decline in the Euro. Still, market chatter seems to be focusing less on the Dollar as safe-haven and more on the fact that the Dollar was merely oversold.

On a purchasing power parity (ppp) basis, the Dollar is starting to look cheap. If the opinions of Europeans, Canadian, Australian, and Japanese tourists are to be taken at face value, the US is cheaper than it has been for years.

FX Bridge Technologies:

FX Bridge Technologies Corporation is a leading global provider of innovative software solutions to companies which participate in the foreign exchange marketplace. Its flagship platform, ProTrader Plus, offers real-time spot, CFD, and options same-account trading and cross-margining, which provides the dealer, broker, and trader the most comprehensive tools suite available today for the richest trading experience.

Last month Alpari US announced that it will start offering fx options trading over FX Bridge’s platform and now it’s Gallant’s turn.Atlanta, Gallant Capital Markets (GA) has selected the FX Bridge Technologies trading platform to provide its new options trading software.Gallant Capital Markets is expanding into both options and CFDs trading and will now offer these products to its customers on the new GCMPro platform provided by FX Bridge.

“FX Bridge has the best technology for FX spot, CFDs and options, both for our customers and our dealing operations,” explains Gallant’s CEO, Salvatore Buccellato. “We’re very impressed with the maturity, depth and breadth of the platform. It has everything we need: high volume/low latency execution, intuitive feature-rich GUI, extensive risk management tools and comprehensive reporting and analysis all in a highly scalable and reliable platform.”

“We continue to hear from our clients that their customers want a multi-asset platform with more trading and risk management strategies,” said Stephen Best, CEO of FX Bridge, “Our same-account spot, options and CFD trading platform satisfies this need and therefore continue to gain in popularity.”

Find out more about FX Bridge

NFA will begin accepting registration applications from forex firms and individuals beginning September 2.

Any existing Forex Dealer Member of NFA that is currently registered as an FCM must register as an RFED unless the firm’s business is primarily or substantially that of a traditional FCM. Moreover, even if the firm’s business is primarily or substantially that of a traditional FCM, the firm must access NFA’s Online Registration System (ORS) and request approval as a Forex Firm and designation as a Forex Dealer Member.

The Commodity Exchange Act was also amended to require any individual acting as a forex solicitor, account manager or pool operator to register with the CFTC as Introducing Brokers (IBs), Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs) or Commodity Pool Operators (CPOs) and become Members of NFA. Also, any Associated Person (AP) soliciting or supervising persons soliciting business on behalf of a forex firm must request approval as a Forex AP.

If you are not currently registered, you must comply with all registration and forex requirements.

All individuals who solicit retail off-exchange forex business or who supervise that activity must take and pass 2 exams:

- the National Commodity Futures Examination (Series 3)

- the Retail Off-Exchange Forex Examination (Series 34)

a new exam focusing exclusively on forex-related questions.

Individuals who were registered as APs, sole proprietors or floor brokers (FBs) on May 22, 2008 will not need to take the Series 34 exam unless there has been a two-year gap in their registration since that date. Every approved Forex Firm (RFED, FCM, IB, CPO or CTA) must have at least one principal who is registered as an AP or FB and who is approved as a Forex AP. Any RFED branch office must have a branch office manager who has taken the Series 30 exam and is an approved Forex AP.

Forex Club is an online forex brokerage firm that teaches first-time traders to learn to trade forex and helps professionals enhance their trading skills and strategies. Forex Club is the first and only broker to offer zero spread trading and to charge commission only on profitable trades. It now opens more than 1,000 new demo and live accounts every day for clients from 120 countries and has registered capital of more than $20 million.

This year FX Club is snatching the title of the fastest US growing retail broker from Interbank FX which held it for the last couple of years. Inc. 500 magazine confirm that Forex Club Financial has been admitted into their ranking of the fastest growing private companies in America. FX Club is a tiny company by US standards and may have had as little as $1 million in customer funds back in 2008. Therefore any growth in customer funds is translated into a significant growth in percents. Inc. 500 awarded Forex Club Financial with the 102nd position on the Inc. 500 listing, making it the 6th fastest growing financial services company, and the fastest growing retail currency trading firm of 2010, after undergoing audits and interviews with the company’s management.

The most important include the opening of the first onsite forex educational seminar office, located in New York City, their partnership with the award winning and world renown technical analysis provider, Trading Central, and the release of their brand new ActTrader platform. Forex Club Financial joins powerhouse companies Microsoft, Visa, Intuit, and E Trade, on this prestigious ranking.

Fx Club will continue to expand and offer their clients cutting edge technology and market research from trusted resources, as the company moves into the future.

Forex Club Financial Company is registered with the CFTC and is a member of the NFA. The company is a global entity, servicing clients in over 150 countries. Forex Club services individual clients, money managers, introducing brokers, and white label companies. The company attributes most of its growth to its revolutionary ExpressFX trading platform, which is, in the company’s opinion, the most user-friendly trading platform in the forex industry, and the company’s fair trading terms.