Broker News

It's a story you don't hear often, and one you hope never to hear – a security breach hit a prominent Forex broker, allowing the personal information of private traders to become available to unauthorized eyes. The broker, Canadian-based Oanda, has divulged that some account information such as bank details, employment details and individual net worth of some of its fxTrade customers was discovered by hackers who accessed a laptop computer belonging to one of the company's employees. The hack is thought to have occurred between July 14 and July 17, 2012. Upon learning about the situation Oanda employees immediately disabled the affected username.

Many Forex brokers are constantly improving their services, but few add dramatic new offerings as regularly as FXCM. Only two months ago FXCM launched its revolutionary Forex app store which offers dozens of helpful Forex trading applications for those who depend upon mobile Forex trading. Now the brokerage has announced another exciting development, the addition of NinjaTrader services to its offerings.

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.