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Is Social Forex Trading Here To Stay!

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 04:26:46 +0000

Forex vendors of all form and type (brokers, signal providers, blogs, news site et al) have all been marketing themselves aggressively online. However now there seems to be a new social trend in forex as with all other industries. Etoro was among the first to give a serious push in this direction with their social trading platform – which allows new traders to piggyback on the laurels of the more experienced traders. For example there are 10 expert traders who have shown consistent results over a certain time period. Some perform better than others, but have a higher risk profile. As a beginner in forex trading, you need not go through the learning process, but simply choose to copy the trades of one of the 10 experts for a small fee paid to the expert. You make money, the expert makes money and Etoro makes money – everyone is happy. At least that is the vision!

Another early entrant in social forex trading is Currensee. They have a similar system called the Trader Leaders Investment Program. Below is a sample of how the Trade Leaders list looks. There are performance indicators, a risk factor, strategy overview and other useful information based on which a beginner can make his or her decision.

More recently there have been a slew of new players entering the market. These include Myfxbook, Fxstat, Meetfx, Forexdesk and Meetpips. While most of them focus on extensive post trade analysis to improve and refine a traders strategy, fxstat has recently introduced there own form of social forex trading and is running its beta version.

True to history there are other forms of trading such as mirror trading which have been around for longer; their campaigns lacked the community essence at its core. It looks like Facebook has made its mark on the forex market as well.

Is Social Forex Trading Here To Stay! post from Forex Trading Blog

Gain Capital IPO At $9 Per Share – Lower Than Expected Valuation

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 20:53:20 +0000

Gain Capital, which owns one the most sought out domain names (forex.com) in the forex trading industry went public at a lower than expected price. Shares went for $9 though expected to go in the $13 to $15 range. This is the second IPO for the forex industry after FCXM a few weeks ago.

The IPO however is unlike typical reasons. A mere 407,000 shares were sold in the IPO by Gain Capital, the remaining 8.5 million shares of common stock was sold by existing shareholders who were cashing in on the exit. While most shareholders exited, Vantage Point continued to hold on to a near 30% holding in the company.

The $3.6 million raised through the IPO only cover the expenses. The company will trade under the ticker GCAP. The mood set by the first two forex IPOs is not exactly the best. Both are clearly means for investors and existing shareholders to exit. There is not much capital generated for growth opportunities or to accelerate operations.

Gain Capital is an online provider of products and service in forex and other commodities such as gold. The company has customers in 140 countries, with over 50% of the clients being outside the United States. Its total annual customer trading volume grew from $231.9 billion in 2005 to $1.2 trillion in 2009. For the nine months ended Sept. 30, Gain Capital generated $148.1 million in revenue and net income of $18.9 million.

Gain Capital IPO At $9 Per Share – Lower Than Expected Valuation post from Forex Trading Blog

FXCM IPO Done At $211M

Sat, 04 Dec 2010 21:58:09 +0000

Congratulations to the FXCM team for get a good IPO. Finally forex has entered mainstream. This will give others in the industry a lot of confidence. We should also see a lot of new players entering and start-ups testing the waters. Investors and venture capital s will also have renewed confidence in currency trading ventures now that the IPO exit strategy has presented itself.

The initial public offering translates to an FXCM valuation of just over $1 billion; which is a 16 times FXCM’s earnings multiple of 2010 after floating 15,060,000 Class A common stock priced at $14.00

Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and Citigroup Global Markets Inc. are acting as joint book-running managers of the offering. Barclays Capital Inc., Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Sandler O’Neill & Partners, L.P. and UBS Securities LLC are acting as co-managers.

FXCM IPO Done At $211M post from Forex Trading Blog