That lawmakers and financial firms are at loggerheads over the forthcoming financial regulations is well known. What may be surprising is that upcoming regulations on OTC derivatives will also cover currency derivatives.

Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA) is nothing new in the equities space. For more than two decades, most buy-side institutions spent considerable time and resources to measure just how cost-effectively they executed on their stock trades. The reasons why are clear: TCA provides unparalleled insight into the best execution framework and can identify opportunities for cost savings and performance improvement.

Increasing regulation and a renewed focus on risk management, alongside a growing and more demanding buy-side has meant that FX e-commerce providers are enhancing and revamping their platforms. Frances Maguire explores how some of the leading players are looking to grow their market share.

The topic of Liquidity Management across the capital markets and in the FX space in particular has received a growing level of attention over recent years as innovation has allowed technology to meet the complex Liquidity requirements of banks and financial institutions, thus helping to deliver efficiencies and mitigate risk. Roger Aitken talks to some leading technology vendors to find out more about the latest developments within this space.

While increasing use of electronically traded options is gradually redefining what is regarded vanilla and exotic, the move towards the development of an ECN for FX options, and the current regulatory debate around central clearing all point to one conclusion: watch this space. Where once, the more complex options

Technology within the financial markets does not stand still for very long and, despite the advances made in electronic trading and execution in the FX market, the next stage of development and the building of a new breed of trade execution platforms are well under way. Nicholas Pratt explores some of the ways that these developments are taking place and what expectations banks and brokers have of their platform providers.

It seems as if every few months there is an article or panel discussion that appropriates a new catchphrase to sum up our industry

With Complex Event Processing (CEP) having spread out across the asset classes - initially within equities

Rate feeds are an essential part of the FX trading process and like every other process it is something that is continually subject to re-engineering and investment in technology development. This development has increased manifold since the advent in electronic and algorithmic trading and it in turn has created a burgeoning vendor market for various software products and applications designed to help banks, brokers and traders make use of rate feeds that can blended, aggregated and optimised to produce an accurate, spike-free supply of prices that reflects true market prices.

Roger Aitken explores why FX trading firms are increasingly seeking dedicated connectivity to their FX trading venues and counterparties and what are the benefits of using global Financial Extranets to achieve this.

The FX world has now fully adapted and attuned itself to the world of algorithmic trading and these tools are now being widely employed across the industry as opposed to being restricted to the elite word of high frequency trading populated by technology-driven hedge funds and prop shops. But now that mainstream adoption has begun, it is clear that the demands from traders are becoming more specific when it comes to their algorithms and the services needed to support them.

The recent credit crisis has resulted in a dynamic shift to the banking industry by opening new opportunities for regional banks. While traditionally focused on serving the domestic needs of local customers, regional banks today are targeting and supplying a broader array of services.

Excellence in quotes aggregation, latency detection with advanced risk control on the back and front ends, as well as near perfect real time reconciliation/synchronicity between the MT4 platform and back office systems are all becoming critical to broker performance, and profitability in an increasingly competitive FX marketplace. e-Forex talks to some of the leading MT4 Bridge providers to discover more about how different bridging technologies are characterised and what are the key trends in this relatively new, and specialized field.

FinaTek (http://www.finatek.com) is the provider of the myForex Trading Platform. Since 1996 the founders of the company, Alexander Ryvin, Anatoly Tkach and Andrew Sinitsyn have been engaged in the design, development and supervision of proprietary trading platforms for leading Retail FX industry players like MGFG, FXCM, FX Solutions, and others. In 2002 they got together to create the next generation enterprise grade Retail FX trading platform. In February 2003 the first release of the myForex platform was successfully launched for CMS in US. Currently myForex is being used by Retail FX market participants all over the world, thus demonstrating that FinaTek

The retail forex trader segment is now a client base as highly sought after as the institutional market. Banks and brokers are bending over backwards to make these smaller players feel like part of the forex family, providing them with the tools of the trade more commonly associated with institutional traders and investors. Heather McLean takes a look at how retail providers are bridging the gap between institutional and retail.

Over the last few years we have witnessed explosive growth in automated forex trading, for the obvious advantages it offers over manual trading, including overriding emotional factors and trading strategy consistency. Heather McLean talks to some of the leading providers of these automated FX solutions to see what

Retail Foreign Exchange Trading has been on the rise for the past five years and remained fully operational during the financial crisis, outperforming most other asset classes. As a result of this, the Forex Educational market has developed and is now set to take centre stage in the next growth phase. One of the fundamental reasons for the increase in popularity of FX training is that it is available to a wider scope of trader, from the beginner to the seasoned professional, and can be undertaken in a variety of methods and flexible times, something that has enhanced its popularity among both retail and professional institutional FX traders.

e-Forex talks with Rory Kennedy, Director of Forex Financial Services (Forex FS), a leading Australian based financial services company which was established in 2008 by a group of former investment bankers, IT specialists and currency dealers.

The financial crisis brought with it unprecedented volatility and credit concerns that are still having their effects on all global markets, including FX

As financial markets move into a phase of heightened regulatory attention in the securities industry, high frequency traders are eager to explore new areas of opportunity. For many, foreign exchange is the New World. Offering the deepest liquidity of any market, along with tremendous volatility and fascinating currency-by-currency characteristics that make each trading pair unique, FX is a fantastic world to explore at any frequency. However, be forewarned that unlike the New World of old, this one is already well-populated with savvy, well-funded and well-established participants, undisturbed stretches of golden opportunity are rare, and success is far from assured. Some of the challenges are common to HFT, but others are unique to FX. So let