Trade Forex With FXCM

Trade Forex With FXCM

about History

Forex Capital Markets was founded in 1999 in New York, and was one of the developers of on-line forex trading.[2]

In Jan 2003 FXCM entered into a partnership with Refco group, which at that time was a large US financial service firm. Refco took a 35% stake in FXCM and licensed the FXCM software for its own clients to use. However, following Refcos collapse in Oct 2005, FXCM became entrenched in the bankruptcy proceedings which carried on for a number of years. In 2007 FXCM settled with Refco's bancrupcy lawyers and agreed to buy back the 35% stake that Refco had bought. In addition as part of the settlement, FXCM also obtained Refco's forex clients.

In 2003 FXCM opened an office in London and became regulated by the UK Financial Services Authority.

In 2008, the US industry regulatory organisation the National Futures Association (NFA) obtained permission from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to increased the minimum capital requirements for ‘Forex Dealer Members’, of which FXCM was one, to $20M in staged increments in response to failures of a few forex brokers. This had the effect of driving out a number of FXCM smaller competitors and even allowed FXCM to increase its client base by acquiring the business from some of the companies that either shut down or moved out of the US.[3][4]

In 2008 FXCM Holdings continued its overseas expansion and opened offices in France and Australia.

In 2009 FXCMs UK operation started offering a limited number of CFD on Gold and Crude Oil to its non US based clients in addition to its currency products.

In May 2010 FXCM acquired the UK CFD and spreadbetting provider ODL[5]. A deal that would give them a much bigger presence in the UK and an existing CFD trading and financial spread betting client base around the world. It would also give FXCM a much larger number of CFD products that it could distribute to its clients in other countries.
[edit] Operation



Operation

FXCMs has its headquarter in New York and it has offices in Dallas, San Francisco, Hong Kong, London, Tokyo, Paris, Sydney, Dubai and Athens.

As well as the main FXCM brand, it also owns the education web site http://www.dailyfx.com.
[edit] Industry

FXCM main business is allowing retail clients to speculate on forex markets with leverage. There is some critism of the industry saying that few retail traders have the experience to make money trading forex. Drew Niv, chief executive of FXCM, has been quoted as saying that "If 15% of day traders are profitable I'd be surprised."[6]

FXCM has links with a number of ECNs to distribute prices and orders, it promotes a 'no dealing desk' service for some of its currency products where it takes prices from a number of the major banks and allows clients to trade the best price published. This is also know as a Direct Market Access (DMA) model which is in contrast to a market maker model more commonly used by forex brokers.
[edit] References

   1. ^ "Company Profile – FXCM Balance sheet". FXCM. http://www.fxcm.co.uk/fxcm-balance-sheet.jsp.  (2010)
   2. ^ "FXCM Review". forexfraud.com. 2009. http://www.forexfraud.com/forex-broker-reviews/fxcm-review.html.
   3. ^ "Net Capital Requirements for Forex Dealer Members". NFA. 24 October 2008. http://www.nfa.futures.org/news/newsNotice.asp?ArticleID=2198.
   4. ^ "NFA proposal could cause significant shakeup among forex brokerages". Currency Trader Magazine. August 2007. http://mediaserver.fxstreet.com/Reports/e14295c4-8509-4ad0-88b5-ee4b026a9442/761e4cac-f3a1-4299-b73b-eb6ff05ae441.pdf.
   5. ^ Harry Wilson (4 May 2010). "Forex broker ODL accepts US takeover". telegraph.co.uk. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/7678650/Forex-broker-ODL-accepts-US-takeover.html.
   6. ^ Karmin, Craig; MICHAEL R. SESIT (2005-07-26). "Currency Markets Draw Speculation, Fraud". The Wall Street Journal (Dow Jones and Company). http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB112233048975295402-NbzPFRn1JqQly3JoxqjuFM_9kn8_20060805.html. Retrieved 2007-10-31.

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