It has been quite a year in the forex industry in 2014. We’re exiting the year with near-record volatility in key currency pairs such as the EURUSD and EURCHF, as well as Yen and Ruble pairs. The USD is at multi-year highs, while Crude Oil is at multi-year lows. Valuations of publicly traded forex brokers are up.
It was also a record setting year for LeapRate. We more than doubled our staff, relaunched our website with a new look and CMS, added LeapRate Russia at ru.leaprate.com (more languages coming soon!), and more than tripled our readership and subscribers to our daily Forex Industry News email newsletter – if you don’t get it, be sure to sign up at right to start your day with all the latest delivered right to your inbox.
But before we look forward to 2015, here are some of the most-viewed Forex Industry News stories on LeapRate during the past 12 months. Enjoy the stroll down Memory Lane!
IronFX preparing $800 million IPO in the US. We also exclusively brought our audience details from IronFX’s preliminary prospectus, such as their monthly volumes, number of clients, and top markets served. We expect more IPO and financing activity out of the forex sector in 2015, this should be an interesting theme to follow.- No more credit card deposits to FX firms in the US after January 2015. We exclusively reported on the CFTC’s actions, which may have put the nail in the coffin of US retail forex trading.
- Gain Capital expands UK presence by acquiring City Index for $118 million. This one deal shook up the very cozy world of UK online trading, with the first major presence of an outsider to join the ranks of IG Group Holdings plc (LON:IGG), CMC Markets, and ETX Capital in the very lucrative UK market. We also brought LeapRate readers an exclusive interview with Gain Capital Holdings Inc (NYSE:GCAP) CEO Glenn Stevens on their plans for City Index.
- CySEC bans Bonuses tied to trading. From early in the year, CySEC made it clear that the Forex industry was important to Cyprus and its economy, but that it was going to inject more scrutiny into its overseeing of he sector.
- UK’s FCA tightens rules in 2014 for Introducing Brokers. For all those acting as IBs for FCA regulated brokers, you’ll certainly have felt the effects of the story we exclusively broke early in the year.
- Bye bye MetaTrader 4! MONEX Group formally announces phase-out. 2014 saw a lot of change in the forex platform business, with brokers not afraid to change things up a little. Japan’s MONEX made a big move over to Tradable during the year.
- Barclays to close Barclays Margin FX due to difficult EMIR regulations. Continuing a trend, Barclays became the latest major global bank to abandon its margin FX business, following in the footsteps on Deutsche Bank and others. Of the world’s big banks, only Citigroup, via its CitiFX Pro subsidiary, has any meaningful presence in Retail FX.
OANDA moves away from social trading one year after buying Currensee. We exclusively covered the (very quiet) shuttering of social trading platform Currensee by OANDA, just one year after OANDA went all-in in not just adopting Currensee but actually buying it. Implementing successful social and copy trading sounds like a great idea, but is often hard to implement.- FXCM expands in Asia, buying IBFX’s MT4 Retail Forex accounts in the US and Australia. Two major themes are covered here – industry consolidation, and a general move east by the major retail forex brokers, such as FXCM Inc (NYSE:FXCM). We expect to see more of both in 2015.
See you all in 2015!