Research Your Broker

May 5, 2006

There is a lot of interesting information on the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) website, one of those things being a spreadsheet of net monthly capital statements for all Forex brokers. The important information in this spreadsheet are the Adjusted Net Capital and Net Capital Requirements which is the amount of capital each firm possesses in excess of minimum set by regulators. By looking in this spreadsheet, one can make assumptions of the financial stabilility of their broker.

Let's look at the Adjusted Net Capital for a couple of brokers I have come across:

Alaron - $5,851,000
Capital Market Services - $6,530,000
FXCM - $19,092,000
FX Solutions - $6,305,000
Gain Capital (Forex.com) - 23,052,000
Oanda - 29,188,244
Tradestation - 37,744,000

I don't think firms without US locations are reported here since the CFTC is responsible for regulation in the United States but it would be advised to consult the information on the site.

http://www.cftc.gov/tm/tmfcm.htm

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Week 17 Performances

April 16, 2006

I jumped back into the market this past week and made 2 losing trades. I lost a total of $539.50. It seems like the losing will never end. I'm not discouraged and I'm looking forward to another trading week. The weather has been beautiful in New York this weekend so I've been outside and will try to remain outside for the remainder of it. I'll try to do a little studying this evening for potential setups during the Asian session today or the US session in the morning.

I figure this may be a good time to mention a new website I'm developing to complement "The Forex Project." The new site is called Forex Care and it will consist of ratings and reviews of all Forex products. There are no reviews as of yet but I'm just starting to get organized and hopeful will complete 1 in the next couple of days. I don't want to just start adding reviews quickly without being as thorough as possible. I've found out for myself and have heard from some of you that it is so hard to find forex related products (websites, books, trading signals, software, etc) that aren't just flat out garbage. Here's my first post of http://www.forexcare.com that explains a little more.

What is this website all about?

Quite
simply, I've seen for myself and have also heard from many visitors how
hard it is to disseminate useful forex information on the web from just
plain garbage. This is the big reason for starting the Forex Care
website. What this website will attempt to do is provide a repository
of Forex Ratings and Reviews of the following:

Forex Brokers
Forex Software
Forex Trading Rooms
Forex Signal Services
Forex Books and Magazines
Forex Websites

These are the main categories that come to mind but I'm sure there will be many more added in the upcoming months.

Who performs these reviews?

Me and hopefully others in the future.

Why are you qualified to perform this?

There are a couple of reasons.

I'm
relatively new to Forex and have been trading Forex for about 6
months. This means that I'm still in the exploration phase and
therefore will be exposed to many forex products.
I run another website called, The Forex Project and doing so exposes me to a lot of your comments and recommendations.
Because I am going to take the time to effort to perform the ratings and reviews without prejudice.

I'm
hoping that I can start to build a ratings and reviews inventory pretty
quickly. Keep your eye on this website for new content daily.

Technical Analysis of the Currency Market

April 8, 2006

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There is yet another Currency book being released at end of April titled, "Technical Analysis of the Currency Market: Classic Techniques for Profiting from Market Swings and Trader Sentiment" by Boris Schlossberg. Boris is a currency strategist for FXCM and the release of his book follows his fellow colleague, Kathy Lein's release last year. The book is described as a comprehensive guide that demonstrates how technical analysis can
generate profit-making strategies in the foreign exchange market.

It's amazing how the Foreign Exchange market continues to explode in popularity. There is a constant influx of book releases and new brokers seem to be flooding the market.