e-Forex talks with Johnathan Assia, CEO of leading FX trading platform eToro

MAP S.Platis is an independent Cyprus-based centre of excellence in the support of financial institutions operating or wishing to operate in the European Union. The company is the leader in the field of registration of Banks and Investment Firms (IFs), including foreign exchange (FX) brokers and market makers in the European Union. The Managing Director, Dr. Stelios Platis, talks to e-Forex about the activities of the company and particularly its core, Financial Services Advisory (FSA), division.

Windsor Brokers is a leading Cyprus-based investment firm that was established in 1988. The company provides a wide range of financial products such as Forex, Futures, Precious Metals, Indices, CFDs and Energies. Johny Abuaitah is Managing Director of the company and talks to e-Forex about its products and services and plans for future growth.

e-Forex talks to Ramzi Chamat, CEO of Tadawul FX Ltd, a leading Swiss forex broker who recently relocated their headquarters to Cyprus.

e-Forex has an exclusive interview with Alexander Saidullin, lead programmer of the new MetaTrader 5 Trading Platform

There was a time when people dreamed of tomorrows world; a place where robots did all the work and humans sat around, directing operations and getting fat. For traders in electronic foreign exchange trading, that day is here. Rules-based trading in retail FX is now a robot-friendly zone. Heather McLean takes a look at what the major pundits in this industry have to say about the decision kick back and letting R2-D2 and C3PO take over.

Contracts For Difference (CFD) trading is a vehicle that has been designed to enable investors to open either a long or short position in a synthetic contract that moves in line with the underlying security. The ability to use leverage affords the investor the opportunity to carry out trades using only a fraction of the underlying contract value. Heather McLean looks at what makes CFD trading an extremely attractive way of gaining significant exposure to securities such as FX, without the traditional obligation to fund the entire contract value.

Before a trader can start making money in FX, they must first choose a trading platform from which to work. This is no simple or even relatively easy task such as deciding on a new car or a lawnmower. From broker, to type of service, to checklist of needs and wants, to individual trading style, the choices facing traders are varied and can be quite complex.

e-Forex talks with Jamal Fakhory, Managing Director of United World Capital, a leading provider of online FX trading services for Retail and Institutional investors.

The recent release of the 2009 Forexds Traders Choice Awards provides a rare glimpse inside the broker preferences of average currency traders worldwide. Rather than making an article about yet another FX award, e-Forex magazine asked me to share the unique aspects of the Forexds Awards. For that, Id like to share some personal thoughts going into this 2 year project and then delve into the results beyond what appeared in the May press release.

With the worlds financial markets still engulfed in the global economic crisis, the appeal of the forex market has never been greater. In addition to the major advantages of 24 hour activity and virtually limitless liquidity, forex is a market that continues to provide significant speculation opportunities while other markets are struggling to maintain stability. These advantages are apparent and thus raise the question: why arent more people trading forex?

Automated processes in the financial field have for a while been the subject of deep interest and evolution, especially since the breakthrough in several areas of computer science in the 90s. Applied to the investment management process, such interest has been leading to a quest of even more integration of the financial decision-making events chain, and such integration finds its ultimate expression and purpose with the so-called automated strategy.

The Islamic world, and especially the Middle East, is fast emerging as a growth area for foreign exchange trading. Arab Financial Brokers (AFB) appears poised to take advantage of this growth. e-Forex interviewed Abdullah Abbas, General Manager of AFB in Kuwait City about some of the exciting opportunities in the region and the wide variety of services which AFB offers.

In some markets, the technology of user interfaces and execution move forward together. In the case of the Forex market however, the evolution of the market has separated the most popular client software solution from the evolving execution process of the industry. While one side of the equation has moved forward, the other side has not been fully integrated with those leaps, until now. The MB Trading/3DForex Forex ECN integration with MetaTrader 4 (MT4) represents a key milestone in the Forex world.

Squared Financial Services Limited is based in Dublin, and is fully-regulated by the Financial Regulator in Ireland. Its execution platform provides round the clock ECN style (variable spread) competitive access to major banks, including Bank of America, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, RBS and UBS. Since these currently constitute many of the major liquidity providers in the FX marketplace, the advantage is clear: Clients are not dependent on any one bank or broker for prices. Prices are fed straight through from these banks with no mark up and a standard, competitive sliding scale volume-based commission fee structure is applied to turnover.

The appeal of online forex trading might actually get a boost from the disarray in traditional asset classes like equities and real estate. Yet a decade after the popularization of Forex trading an age-old question remains: what forex broker is right for me?

Retail FX is proving to be a massive draw for banks, brokers and financial institutions. These businesses are eager to benefit from the growing retail FX market, which has recently seen tremendous growth. Yet, getting into this specialist area using in-house technology and knowledge is not as easy as many first thought; the answer for many is White Labelling.

Are exchange traded FX currency products set for new growth? Frances Maguire looks at what investment strategies exchange-traded currency futures and options offer retail investors looking to diversify and enhance their trading strategies.

An increasing number of banks are now offering private investors the ability to trade FX on a speculative basis, on margin, previously only offered by retail brokers and portals that aggregated prices for private investors from the various brokers. Frances Maguire investigates what products are currently available.

MB Trading (Manhattan Beach Trading, Inc.) was founded in 1999 by Ross Ditlove and institutional broker Steve Demarest. It occupies a valuable space in the FX broking space, by acting as an ECN broker for minimum account sizes as low as $400, thus allowing the retail client a chance at competing in a very low spreads environment normally reserved for bigger players. Recently, MB Trading acquired introducing agent EFX Group LLC, thus consolidating the group further.

MIG Investments recently launched its corporate rebranding campaign, a new website and plans to submit its application for a Swiss banking license later this year . Larry Levy looks at the website offered by the company which is located Neuchtel in Switzerland and is regulated by the Swiss Federal Department of Finance (SFDF). The MIG trading platform supports over 20 languages whilst the telephone support staff speak many of the major languages. MIG offer both IB and White Label programmes. In 2009 the company plans to become a Swiss Bank, offering further financial services and products, including asset management.

The FX market is attractive to investors because it is uncorrelated with equity markets. A managed account provides an investor with the opportunity to participate in the FX market and benefit from its high profit potential without having to trade for themselves. Accounts are also actively managed, so the investor is not invested in the market all the time. Heather McLean looks at what's involved and the key importance of trading technology in FX Managed Accounts.

Larry Levy looks at FXdirekt Bank, one of a small handful of German banks offering a comprehensive range of FX, and CFDs and so called FFDs (Futures for Differences) contracts on a range of instruments for the retail client. Founded by current CEO Wolfgang Stobbe in 2004, FXdirekt Bank has seen rapid growth, by catering to its market the German-speaking customer and has won the Brokerwahl.de Forex Broker of the Year prize for the past three years.

Larry Levy talks with the Private Investor Products group at Abn Amro, about the banks' Retail FX trading platform - marketindex.

Heather McLean explores why the rapid and exciting growth of Retail FX is dependent upon the ability to supply clients with both state-of-the-art trading technology as well as superior service provision.

Larry Levy interviews Matthew Klein Founder and CEO of the trading systems portal Collective2.com

Larry Levy looks at how the arrival of QuoteTrader, an order entry, quotes and charting package marks the arrival of an essentially new type of uber software for the financial markets.

The spotlight is now on the retail FX sector, which could bring new revenue streams for those banks quick enough to respond. Frances Maguire investigates

In recent years there has been expansive growth in automated FX trading. For example, whist the majority of clients at Strategy Runner, (the vendor that facilitates automated trading connecting a variety of automated trading applications to a range of brokers) are still futures based, the gap is rapidly closing in favor of FX.

Steven Petillo evaluates the potential for the retail foreign exchange market in China and whats shaping the electronic trading landscape in the country.

Greg Hay outlines how clients can now be provided with verified trading results taken from live accounts, to reduce the confusion facing Retail FX Traders when selecting trading systems to add to their portfolio.

Mike Thrower examines why banks are looking to target the increasing growth in flows originating from Retail FX investors and whats required to enable them to deliver a professional margin trading solution.

Andrew Haines provide an overview of the opportunities API trading offers to Retail FX traders and whats required to get started.

Heather Mclean talks to leading retail FX trading providers about the growing importance of providing value-added and customer relationship services to help maintain customer loyalty.

Heather McLean talks to a selection of leading Retail FX brokers about their rapidly growing marketplace and the decision of several large banks to move into this space.

Paddy Osborn analyses the pros and cons of service distribution and examines developments that will shape the future delivery of FX market data and technical analysis.

Heather McLean interviews industry players to see why Trading Arcades & Prop shops are growing in influence and how their trading models differ.

Dr Anna Becker looks at the development of automated programs designed to maximize FX trading revenue and efficiencies, and the levels of customisation that are now available.

Daniel Darst illustrates how serious trading demands efficient, real-time integration of risk, margin and account information.

Rick Sears examines the potential impact of bringing the two largest pools of buyers and sellers into one unified trading environment.

Scott Owens examines how automated trading systems now allow the trader to construct custom strategies for attacking the market with consistency and discipline.

The concept of automated trading has attracted rapidly growing interest in recent years. Andy Webb looks at a key focus for this growing interest which is high frequency autotrading.

The rise of FX Model Systems Trading

Improved accessibility has been the key to opening up the global FX market to retail traders says Nick Sudbury, who shows how the focus is now turning to the provision of decision support tools.

Daniel Harvey traces how recent technological advances now permit the application of powerful and computationally intensive numerical methods to foreign exchange data.

The retail FX trader can now benefit from many of the tools and techniques previously only available to the professional market. Tim Finch tells us more.

Effective training, particularly in the technology involved, is key for anyone trading FX online. Andy Shearman talks about some of the methods involved.

Ahmed Nasirwarraich, discusses how currency traders can now reap the benefits of wireless technology by using their cell phones, palm pilots or personal digital assistants (PDA's).

Nicholas Bang discusses some of the issues that retail investors need to look at when trading FX online.

With equity houses becoming aware of the potential of online FX they need to consider the best means of bring FX to their customers. Ilya Sorokin talks about White labelling with an MSP.