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.

With the advent of Apple's iPhone, the entire mobile industry changed. From having mobile handsets to make calls on and send text messages, users were able to use their mobile device to access the internet, download applications for both work and play, and discover new ways of doing business and staying in touch with each other. Communication has entered a new era thanks to Apple's development, as every other major handset manufacturer quickly followed suit and began developing new ranges of Smartphones and launching application stores, while network carriers bundled data packages onto voice and text tariffs as end users became more familiar with the mobile web.

Forex ECN platforms sound in theory like the ultimate utopian environment for trading. They can provide a place where orders are matched in real time in a collective bubble of liquidity provided by each of the market’s participants. However, as Heather McLean discovers, there is more to the world of the ECN than meets the eye.

Service, innovation and security are the three key areas for winning the hearts and minds of retail traders. But what do these smaller traders really want from their platform providers Heather McLean sets out to explore what brokers are doing to improve the FX experience for the armies of retail traders spilling out of the woodwork across the globe.

The CEE generally refers to the group of "Central and Eastern European" countries, formerly called the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. These include Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovinia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia and, though it was never in the communist Eastern Block as such, Turkey. Recently, eForex interviewed Karol Piovarcsy, head of the newly opened Saxo Bank branch office in Prague, and Vladimir Kisyov, Head of Business Development at Deltastock in Sofia, Bulgaria about the growth and prospects from their perspectives for FX in this region.

Social networking has now come of age in the consumer market, with the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Bebo and LinkedIn all attracting record numbers of members. Heather McLean explores how this maturing technology has now given rise to increasing interest in social networking for retail FX users, with added trading tools, charts, news feeds and forums to maximise the benefits for end users.

The concept of 'Direct Market Access' (DMA) is a simple one and is yet another example of an invention that started out in the equities market and is now being adopted in the FX market. Nicholas Pratt examines the evolution of DMA and what it means for FX traders

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.

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.

The recent release of the 2009 Forexds Trader’s 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, I’d 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

e-Forex talks to Nicholas Bang, the Managing Director of leading Swiss forex broker, Advanced Currency Markets SA (ACM).

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.

eSignal represents one of the most comprehensive and powerful all round analytical and order entry packages on the market today for the FX trader. The release of eSignal 10.1 further increases the power of the product offering, by adding The TradeManager, a DOM / ladder order ticket entry to a number of major FX (and other) brokers. With comprehensive charting, user defined order entry and execution, custom indicators and back testing, as well as the powerful eSignal Advanced GET (Gann Elliott Techniques) Edition, it makes for a formidable offering to both the professional and advanced retail markets.

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.

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.

TeleTrader Professional Workstation is a sophisticated all-round charting, quotes, news and analysis package sold in Pro, FX and LT (Light) editions as well as being available as a “white label” solution. In its white label version (known as “FX AccuCharts” to clients of FX Solutions, LLC), it is available free of charge with data provided by the broker system’s quote engine on all of its FX pairs.

Steve Oppenheimer and Thomas Parry outline how interest in automated trading models and algorithmic execution strategies for the foreign exchange market has grown significantly.

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.

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.

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.

With Alain Broyon & Dr. Andre Duka.

Greg Michalowski talks about Slippage in FX trading and how to minimize its impact.

Andy Webb outlines one way of addressing the latency issue for one of the most ubiquitous applications in financial markets - Microsoft Excel.

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.

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.

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