Broker News

Jennifer Thornburg is a successful Forex trader who runs several Forex websites. She will be speaking at the Futures and Forex Expo in Las Vegas, along with DailyForex senior analyst Huzefa Hamid. Learn more about the expo here.

After receiving licensing from the Financial Services Board (FSB) of South Africa, DeltaStock, a Bulgarian-based Forex broker, has opened an office within the country's borders, in the business district of Parktown, Johanesburg. The FSB is the regulatory body that oversees all non-banking services in South Africa. Among the bodies regulated by the FSB are the country's stock exchange, though few Forex brokers are registered with the FSB. Traders wondering about this latest regulation should not be confused – DeltaStock is also regulated by the FSC and BNB, and it operates under MiFID, the regulatory body that is dominant in Europe and one that does supervise a host of reliable Forex brokers.

Social Forex trading seems to be the latest and greatest thing in the currency trading industry. In fact, it seems like every week a new social trading experiment is born, whether through a privately held company or through a brokerage looking for ways to attract new traders or to convince people that trading is incredibly easy. The downside to social Forex trading, of course, is that you never know whether you're really following an expert or just a lucky trader whose winning streak may end, leaving you with significant losses. A similar claim can be made about the Forex signal industry, though signals providers often provide long-term reports of their trades rather than just a few recent entries or exits as is common in social Forex trading (the industry is, after all, too young to really have long-term reporting available).

Although the Chinese government has long been characterized as a restrictive regime, the country's State Administration for Foreign Exchange (SAFE) has just announced that as of June 11, 2012 Chinese financial institutions will be permitted to carry out Forex swaps without exchanging principal, as was required since 2007. Eliminating this requirement to swap the principal in Forex trades will lower the cost of each transaction which should hopefully increase the overall volume of trades and open up the foreign exchange market to an entirely new market.

The prisoner's dilemma could well be applied to the Eurozone these days. For those not familiar with it, a brief introduction is in order: The prisoner's dilemma is a concept in game theory which suggests the following scenario where people cooperating would likely do well for themselves, but they might not do so anyway:

The National Futures Association, the regulatory body for Forex brokers in the United States, already had a reputation for being the strictest regulatory agency in the world, but the agency is continuing to support this reputation by continuing to propose regulation that will crack down on futures commission merchants (FCMs) dealing with client segregated funds.

Cyprus has long been a hotbed for Forex activity, with a high percentage of brokers regulated in the country by CySEC and a similar number of brokers housing their main offices in the island country. But this week the Cyprus will become known not only for its regulation but for serving as the host of the first @iFXEXPO, a Forex B2B convention which will be hosted by Google and ConversionPros, a global marketing agency.

Following shakeups in the senior staff at some of the biggest Forex brokers including Forex.com and GFT Forex, OANDA has become the next Forex broker to reshuffle its team, replacing CEO Michael Stumm with K Duker, the former Managing Director for the broker's Asia Pacific division. Mr. Stumm will be remaining on the company's board of directors, but will no longer fill the role of CEO. Instead, Mr. Duker will now be tasked with helping the brokerage expand from its current market position to hopefully enjoy a larger percentage of the industry pie.