Broker News

It seems each time I finish my column and it goes up here on the blog, something else happens – like the threat to the Euro from the latest reverberations cascading across the continent. Last week it was Italy who was in trouble and now there are rumblings that France could find itself in difficult times, leaving only Germany as a relatively unscathed nation in the Euro Zone.

The third quarter of 2011 may be a distant memory for some, but many companies are only now publishing the progress they made during those months. One such company is FXCM (NYSE: FXCM), a top Forex broker that operates both in the US and worldwide. The numbers released by the company last week were encouraging on several levels. The company's reported revenues increased 16% in the first 9 months of 2011 as compared with the first 9 months of 2010. All told, the company's revenue from January 1 through September 30, 2011 was $307.1 million, up from $264.2 million in 2010. In the third quarter of 2011 specifically, FXCM's revenue was $109.1 million, a significant improvement over the company's second quarter revenue, which was recorded at $103.4 million.

The thing that makes writing about Forex and investing so fascinating is that things can change in an instant – fortunes can be won and lost on the turn of a single piece of news (like the one about Italy becoming the new Greece, but more on that in a moment).

No, I haven't lost my mind. I'm well aware that Greek sovereign debt is likely to be repaid at around 50 Eurocents on the Euro according to the current bailout talks. And that sucks for those who made the initial loans. However, in the past few months, Greek debt has been selling on the open market for as little as 30-40 Eurocents on the Euro meaning that those who were smart enough to buy it up while debt negotiations were ongoing stand to reap a tidy profit for having taken a chance.

Colonel Qaddafi, branded the "?mad dog of Libya" by former president Ronald Reagan, is dead. Defiant until the very end according to his aides, he kept up his delusions of returning to power and taking Libya back for his own family's personal gain. And now that the fighting is done with, NATO is preparing to withdraw and the Libyans are busy planning their first free elections, the question that must be asked is this: how will this affect the rest of the world? Here's what you need to know:

I have to admit that I've largely ignored the Occupy Wall Street protest movement. I'm a native New Yorker so you'd think that I would know more about it, but it's been a while since I've lived in the city and there isn't a protest of this kind anywhere near where I now live. However, this past week, I could ignore it no longer. The global protest movement held last Saturday, in solidarity with the ideals of the Occupy Wall Street movement shows the kind of pent up anger that is permeating the world today.

Steve Jobs may have passed away, but there's no question that he will still continue to impact the world, and the Forex industry, in profound ways. On October 11, less than one week since Mr. Jobs' death, Forex.com announced the launch of its new iPad trading application which is available free of charge at Apple's App Store.

As an island, the United Kingdom stands apart from the rest of Europe physically, and there's no question that over the course of time, its leaders have struggled to maintain this distinction economically as well, opting not to embrace the common currency, and instead to maintain the almighty Pound, once thought to be among the strongest global currencies.