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’s on offer and how traders can avoid some of the pitfalls.

The Internet has provided the means for an increasing multitude of people to trade the forex market. In addition to facilitating their ability to trade foreign exchange, the Internet has also made possible a growing variety of automated forex trading system and forex signal generation software programs.

There was a time when people dreamed of tomorrow’s 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.

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.

eSignal has launched a delayed "snapshot" intraday and end of day analysis package with realtime FX (to be added shortly). eSignal OnDemand harnesses the power and resource of the eSignal database for $34.95 per month, with delayed quotes and charting on hundreds of thousands of symbols including equities, futures and forex. For one "region" only the price falls to $24.95 per month. Streaming Realtime single contributor FX quotes will cost an extra $20 /mth, representing eSignal's lowest ever price point for this data.

This article aims to describe how technical indicators can be used in the development of an Automated or Algorithmic trading system.

The technology behind machine readable news has become more mature allowing providers to refine their offerings and for high frequency trading firms to use them as a greater part of their quantitative trading strategies. Nicholas Pratt examines what factors a firm must consider when looking to implement machine readable news within their own trading desks and what help may be at hand

Interdealer-broker ICAP’s Jim O’Hagan, Global Product Manager for EBS Market Data, discusses the crucial role historical market data plays in developing more reliable FX trading models and strategies.

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

Frances Maguire sets out to discover whether the growing demand for application program interfaces (APIs) to enable more automated options trading could pave the way for an ECN-model for FX options.

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

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.