In 2016, we have seen some incredible market dislocation due to various global events (BREXIT, US Elections, OPEC, GBP Flash Crash, FOMC to name a few).
Having experienced my fair share of these moves, I find myself in a unique position to be able to speak with a diverse group of market participants, ranging from Fund Managers to Hedge Funds and individual traders, each of them trying to successfully navigate through these turbulent markets.

Recently, I have found myself in conversations with seasoned industry veterans who asked for my advice on what I thought would be the next shoe to drop?

There are many Forex terms a FX Professional have to know to do a great job and to be successful. In order to help Brokers and Traders to get to know the basics of the FX industry, the Advanced Markets Team created this glossary. 
Discover the Advanced Markets FX dictionary here and feel free to contact us if you want us to add further terms!

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

Traditionally, December is the month when the majority of FX professionals take some well-deserved time off. Fund Managers are avoiding any major market participation that could negatively impact annual return statistics; bank employees are trying to use up their remaining vacation time, and the overall the spirit of holidays (Christmas, Hanukkah, Omisoka, Kwanzaa, and many others) makes December the perfect time to relax ahead of the January hype.

CySec’s strategic move capitalizes on a potential shift in the global FX landscape.

As someone who is very passionate about FX and football, I’m always keen to draw parallels between both whenever possible.

Where football and, indeed, sport in general is concerned, 2016 will forever be remembered as “the year of the underdog”

Here are the Top 5 reasons why you should consider opening Live Account with Advanced Markets. 

1. Save money and time by dealing with real 100% STP Liquidity Provider - Finding a reputable prime broker that also offers quality institutional liquidity and transparent execution can be a challenging task. ASIC registered and licensed Advanced Markets Ltd. offers Prime of Prime (PoP) brokerage services and ECN model where aggregated institutional liquidity derives from Tier 1 banks and major non-bank sources. 

Major market events are generally accompanied by periods of massive uncertainty, volatility and downright fear. It doesn’t matter whether these events are expected, like the Brexit vote, or unexpected like the SNB move last year, the outcome is the same. Many market participants have a few options on how to survive the dislocation. Fear of the unknown creeps into every financial exchange, instability reigns and price action is violent. These events has the potential to affect every trader, brokerage and bank for days, weeks and even years depending upon their severity and the resulting market fallout. Below, I will outline a few possible risk/reward strategies along with how to attempt to control the uncontrollable.

I should start by saying that this article may not be applicable to many market participants, but hopefully the information will be useful when for anyone looking to execute large market orders. 

Technology is certainly at the heart of the FX Business, and, nowadays, has a role to play in dictating the rules of the game. The term “toxic FX flow” often has a direct relationship to the technology behind the liquidity.

What is toxic flow in FX anyway? 

More times than not, an interested client inquiring about liquidity will ask the quintessential question, “What is Advanced Markets’ spread in EURUSD?” My standard, truthful response is always that, “the spread is dependent upon market conditions, as Advanced Markets is a true STP Prime of Prime and only provides aggregated liquidity from top tier, global banks.  With that being said, EURUSD spread should normally sit within an average range of 0.3-0.5 given our ability to provide very deep liquidity due to our favorable bank relations”.  Generally, when someone asks me this question, I will always follow up by mentioning our GOLD offering.  In my opinion, Gold has the potential to offer a prospective brokerage (or Fund Manager) more than the EURUSD spread can when looking at future revenues.  Many people look at the EURUSD first due to the fact that many brokers aggressively market their “tight” EURUSD spread in order to attract clients and get them in the door. Once they have them in, however, they tend to pile on the mark-ups across the other pairs in their offering.

When someone starts thinking about opening a Forex brokerage their mind immediately fills with question after question. Which regulatory jurisdiction should I choose? How much capital do I need? What kind of license do I need? How do I get pricing? Where do I base the operation? The “office” / location question is usually the last that comes to mind but the choices made here can determine whether a business succeeds or fails. The following 5 points are therefore worth considering before making any decisions on your brokerage startup: 

The ability to trade using leverage is one of the key advantages associated with “retail” forex trading. This unique factor tends to attract more investors to forex, rather than to equities or other financial instruments, as there is the perceived opportunity to generate profits with little money down.

This article originally appeared on Finance Magnates.

I have worked in the FX industry for the past 16 years but I believe that 2015 will stand out most as the year when the market was taught a very valuable lesson. When I look back upon this year, I can’t help feeling that, by applying a simple life principle, many of 2015’s pitfalls might have been avoided.

FIX (Financial Information Exchange) API (application programming interface) is a highly scalable electronic communication protocol to facilitate the real-time exchange of information related to financial markets. It has become the de facto standard method of pre-trade, trade and post-trade communication. Market participants including banks, hedge funds, prime brokers and “prime of primes” utilize FIX for their own trading needs or to connect directly to clients.

To give you an indication as to how popular FIX is: the FIX Trader Community has around 110 000 registered members and 275 corporate members (including Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Morgan Stanley and so on).

Having just returned from the recent B2B Expo in London and the Money Fair in Shanghai we are now looking back and are discussing the merits of attending these B2B and B2C FX industry events. Unless your budget allows you the freedom to attend all events, it’s prudent to prioritize and to choose those that will best benefit your business.

New electronic solutions for FX block trading are emerging as this last bastion of voice trading is being reshaped by increased regulatory capital requirements, tighter internal credit standards and fallout from the fixing quagmire.

This article discusses the Full Order Execution (FOX) block trading mechanism offered by Advanced Markets, which operates a low latency, direct market access (DMA) liquidity pool in which liquidity is streamed by 10 leading FX banks.

The world of online Retail FX has become increasingly competitive and congested but, regardless, the industry remains extremely attractive to investors, insiders and entrepreneurs alike. One key factor adding to the attraction is the ease by which a person can actually start their own brokerage. In past years, starting a brokerage normally required expert technology and market knowledge combined with a significant amount of free capital but today, advances in technology and an increase in the options available for regulatory licenses have greatly reduced the cost and the “time-to-market”.

A money broking license offered by the LFSA (Labuan Financial Services) Malaysia, is fast becoming a sought after license in the Asian region. LFSA, which is an offshore financial regulatory authority for Malaysia, has been in operation since 1996. The region includes over 6500 offshore companies and more than 300 licensed financial institutions including some of the world’s leading banks.

As a VP of sales, I have noticed that during many of my conversations lately I am helping brokers and fund managers identify the most appropriate trading venue to serve the needs of their respective businesses. This has become a very hot topic after the January 2015 Swiss event as the major Tier 1 Prime Brokerages have raised capital requirements, introduced tighter onboarding processes and, in many cases, revised their pricing models in order to mitigate the risks associated with FX prime brokerage.
In order to help ease the process of selecting the right partner I will briefly describe the 3 most popular options available for retail FX brokers, asset managers and corporates and point out each of their pros and cons.

The FX market presents tremendous opportunities for entrepreneurs looking to enter the largest financial market in the world with daily trading turnover of 5.3 trillion.*

Advanced Markets and Fortex are pleased to announce their Start Your Own Brokerage program that includes a number of packages with different service bundles to accommodate any business model.

Over the past few years the traditional FX Prime Broker industry has been thinning out, creating a demand for the types of services they provided. The loss of the institutional big bank Prime Brokerage services has occurred due to credit risk, small profit margin, risk aversion and new regulation. This reaction by those larger prime brokers has been clearing the way for specialized FX Prime of Prime (PoP) firms to gain market share. A Prime of Prime brokerage is a one stop shop for retail brokerages, hedge funds, money managers and wholesale traders to access top tiered global bank liquidity, cutting edge technology, cost effective rollover rates and clearing services.

On January 15, 2015, the SNB (Swiss National Bank) caused a massive upheaval in the FX industry when they manipulated the exchange rate of the franc and unpegged their currency against the euro.
This action threw the markets into complete panic, ultimately producing capitulation with the CHF pairs and creating catastrophic losses throughout the industry. Market participants were affected across the entire spectrum, all the way from the top tiered global banks down to individual investors.
The large banks and market makers were able to absorb the losses (or major gains if B Book), but the smaller, more vulnerable, participants could not.
Some brokerages were forced to close their doors due to negative balances as a result of the losses sustained from their client’s positions. A multitude of firms such as Alpari UK, Boston Prime, Excel Markets and Liquid Markets became insolvent, just to name a few.

Our team has a combined 100 years plus experience in institutional FX and prime brokerage fields. We use that experience and proven insights to work with FX brokerages and asset managers to enhance their offerings and achieve better operational efficiencies. At Advanced Markets and Fortex our focus will remain on helping you to solve complex problems and grow your business by leveraging superior Fortex technology and best of breed liquidity from Advanced Markets.