Category: Industry

ASIC has released a consultation paper Product intervention: OTC binary options and CFDs on proposals to use its product intervention power to address significant detriment to retail clients resulting from over-the-counter (OTC) binary options and CFDs.

The Australian market for binary options and CFDs is growing rapidly, with the number of clients more than doubling in the past two years to one million clients (99% are retail clients and the majority are based offshore). Licensed issuers of these products conducted 675 million trades with clients last year and earlier this year held $2.9 billion of client money for trading.

ASIC is concerned that retail investors have suffered, and are likely in the future to suffer, significant detriment from binary options and CFDs.

A review conducted by ASIC in 2017 found that: 80% of clients who trade binary options lose money; 72% of clients who trade CFDs lose money, and 63% of clients who trade CFD over currency pairs lose money.

ASIC Commissioner Cathie Armour said, "For many years ASIC has taken strong action to protect consumers of binary options and CFDs, using the range of regulatory tools available to us. However, we are concerned that consumers continue to suffer significant harm from trading these products.

"A complete ban would prevent retail clients from losing money trading binary options. We believe binary options provide no meaningful investment or economic use and have product characteristics similar to gambling products," Commissioner Armour said.

ASIC seeks the feedback on its proposed product intervention orders by 1 October 2019.

The development of the online trading industry has opened its doors to gender diversity, which gave females a lot of opportunities for the career and self-growth. More and more women open the trading world for themselves and succeed in the markets. 

Top 10 female traders in the forex world

We have listed the top 10 female traders in the forex market who show that women are also capable to nail it and be on the top of the trading world. 

1. Kathy Lien
   began her Wall Street career when she was only 18 and in five years she has already launched a free news website DailyFX that is now considered to be one of the world's leading sources for financial news. She is also a well-known forex trading author.
2. Abigail Johnson
   has served as President and CEO of the Fidelity Investments since 2014. Abigail has a degree from Harvard and has been working for Fidelity Investments for at least a decade. 
3. Linda Bradford Raschke
   has started her trading career in 1981 and became a world-renowned commodities and futures trader. She has also worked as a trading coach and lectured on behalf of such influential companies as Bloomberg. She currently serves as president at the LBR Group Inc., the company specializes in Asset Management.
4. Tracy Britt Cool
   is a Harvard University graduate that now serves on the Harvard business school’s alumni board. During her student years, Tracy founded an organization that provides personal finance education to undergraduate women. In 2009 Cool has joined Berkshire Hathaway as the Financial Assistant to the Chairman and now she serves as the CEO of the Pampered Chef company. 
5. Jennifer Fan
   is a hedge fund manager that specializes in profile management, energy and agriculture commodities. She has degrees in statistics, finance, and operation research and she used to work at Arrowhawk Capital Management and Morgan Stanley.
6. Miriam S. Klein
   has been in the financial industry since the age of 20 and has started her career in the tax department of D. E. Shaw & Co., L.P. Later she has been advising private investment firms at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. These days Miriam serves as a Managing Director at Centerbridge.
7. Raghee Horner
   is an expert in trading futures, options, spot currencies and equities. She is famous for creating the 34 EMA wave method and works as the Managing Director of Futures Trading. Raghee is dedicated to understanding the markets and has helped a lot of people to gain an edge in the market.
8. Kristin Bentz
   worked as an analyst in the consumer brands sector for Lehman Brothers. She is known for the ability to identify consumer trends and invest in them. She appears on Bloomberg TV quite often, as well as on  Radio, Fox News Channel and CNBC. Kristin serves as an Executive Director of PMG Venture Group, a private equity firm.
9. Lucy Baldwin
   is famous for landing on the sought-after “30 Under 30 in Finance” Forbes list. Another achievement is the title of Managing Director at both Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where she was responsible for European equities trading. These days she works as Global Head of Sales at Credit Suisse.
10. Lauren Simmons
    is famous for becoming the youngest full-time female equity trader at the NYSE. She is often called a “Lone Woman on Wall Street.” Her trading journey has started with moving to New York and meeting the CEO of Rosenblatt Securities. She also plans to publish a work, focusing on women and millennials in finance.

These women have shown that good trading is not strictly reserved for men and they are ushering in a new breed of female traders in forex marketing who will undoubtedly disrupt and reshape the trading industry.

Forex market is one of the biggest and most accessible markets in the world nowadays. Not everyone knows that it is considered to be centuries old. And yes, it is important to know the history of the forex trading to predict some events as we know that history tends to repeat itself. We are going to talk about several important events that have shaped the market created the forex market as we know it today. 

Beginning of the Forex Era

It all began in the 1800s with the creation of the gold standard. It meant that a government could redeem any amount of paper money for its value in gold. The gold standard was adopted in 1819 in England and 1934 in America. However, it was suspended in Europe during the world wars. 

During the period between 1899 and 1913 foreign exchange holdings have increased by almost 11 %, which marked the importance of the Forex market. 

By the end of 1913, only two foreign exchange brokers have operated in London when the most active trading cities were Paris, Berlin and New York. 

The famous Bretton Woods Accord was signed in July 1944, which fixed other currencies to the US Dollar and created an adjustable forex market. Although in 1971 the Bretton Woods system was ended due to the lack of gold to peg to the circulating US Dollars.

The failure of the Bretton Woods has resulted in the creation of the free-floating currency system, which meant the free-floating of the US Dollar to other foreign currencies. Unfortunately, this system wasn't perfect and collapsed in 1973. 

Modern Forex Market

The 1973 year is considered to be the year when the modern Forex market began. Back then the state control of foreign exchange has ended and complete floating and relatively free market conditions began.

After the weight of the dollar crushed developing nations economies and got them in debt, the most powerful economies in the world met secretly at the Plaza Hotel in New York City in 1985. The plan was to encourage the appreciation of non-dollar currencies.

In 1992 the Maastricht Treaty was signed. This treaty has led to the establishment of the Euro currency and the EU establishment itself. With the creation of the Euro, all the exchange risks for European banks were removed.

The development of the Internet has opened a lot of opportunities for the traders and currency markets became faster and more sophisticated. Banks created their own trading platforms and retail brokers introduced internet-based trading platforms for individuals.

Also, the new markets such as those in Southeast Asia have emerged and started attracting capital and currency speculation.

Today Forex market handles over $5 trillion in trades daily and considered to be the biggest market in the world. It is the best time to be in the forex market as traders now have access to various trading platforms and technology that helps them make better trades.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is warning investors to be vigilant to the threat posed by investment scammers, as data from Action Fraud reveals over £197 million of reported losses in 2018. Victims were scammed out of over £29,000 on average last year, as fraudsters employed increasingly sophisticated tactics to persuade victims to invest.

Most commonly reported scams involved investments in shares and bonds, forex and cryptocurrencies by firms that are not authorized by the FCA. Together they accounted for 85%2 of all suspected investment scams reported in 2018.

The profile of investment scams is changing as more and more people are being targeted online, moving away from the traditional cold call. Fraudsters are now contacting people through emails, professional looking websites and social media channels, such as Facebook and Instagram. Though the contact methods used by fraudsters may vary, their tactics remain the same.

The FCA is urging people to be vigilant when making investment decisions, and to look out for these six warning signs: cold-calling, time pressure, fake reviews, false authorization (regulation).

To reduce the chance of falling victim to investment fraud, the FCA advises consumers to, at the very least: Reject unsolicited investment offers whether made online, on social media or over the phone. Before investing, check the FCA Register to see if the firm or individual you are dealing with is authorized and check the FCA Warning List of firms to avoid. Get impartial advice before investing.

You can also read about the perks of trading with FCA brokers here.