Looking back at the most intriguing and popular industry news from the past week between 14th and 18th of September on LeapRate.
Online gaming and financial trading giant Playtech PLC (LON:PTEC) released its trading volumes for the first half of 2020, which ended on 30 June. The company has benefited from making timely decisions in response to the Covid-19 induced market volatility and has delivered a resilient performance for the first half of the year driven by its financial division TradeTech Group (which includes CFH, Alpha, Markets.com).
Global investment platform eToro announced expanding their investment in football clubs across Europe with the launch of twelve new sponsorships in the UK and Germany. As an active football club sponsor in Europe, eToro will extend its UK Premier League partnerships with Crystal Palace, Everton, Leicester City and Southampton. In addition to that, it will also include West Bromwich Albion and Burnley to its portfolio.
The Israel-based online trading broker Plus500 held its annual general meeting (AGM) on Wednesday. The CFD trading platform issued a trading update ahead of the AGM reporting continued good performance for the second half of the year. At the meeting, most resolutions and re-elections looking for shareholder approval were passed, including the election of Anne Grim to the Board as a Non-Executive director. However, the resolution for bonus for the Group’s CFO Elad Even-Chen was withdrawn.
Retail brokers generally state that around 75% of retail investors lose money – the majority of these losses are in the spread value of their trades (because they are trading on wide spreads) rather than because they call the market wrong. However, studies have shown that over the long-term (if you take out transaction costs and spreads), clients’ trading P&L is generally no better or worse than that of their brokers. LeapRate spoke to Jeff Wilkins, Managing Director of IS Risk Analytics (ISRA), to explore this topic further.
Online FX and CFD trading and cryptocurrencies provider FXCM announced expanding its trading offering of available trading instruments with the addition of Volatility Index CFDs. Volatility Index CFD offers tracking the future volatility markets, rather than the stock prices and with that provides clients with the opportunity to profit directly from the unprecedented market, irrespective of which way the market is heading.
The pan-European market operator Euronext announced the appointment of Aurélie Cohen as Chief Communications and Investor Relations Officer. At his new position Cohen will lead all internal, external and financial communications for the Group. The exchange also confirmed submitting a non-binding offer to London Stock Exchange Group plc to acquire Borsa Italiana but pointed out that there still cannot be certainty of a transaction.
