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Eightcap, a well-known global FX and CFD services provider based in Melbourne, Australia, has recently introduced an innovative tool for its clients: an economic calendar powered by AI. Developed in collaboration with Acuity, the calendar offers a comprehensive overview of more than 1000 macroeconomic events, sorted by their potential impact on the market. This tool aims to help traders manage market volatility triggered by economic events more efficiently and make good trading decisions.

The new economic calendar introduced by Eightcap differs from traditional calendars as it offers a range of unique features providing valuable insights into the market's reaction to economic events. Not only does it give an overview of upcoming macroeconomic events, but it also explains the reason behind the event's impact and how the market will react.

The CEO of Eightcap, Alex Howard, believes that the new AI-powered economic calendar will offer clients a powerful new tool to stay ahead of the fast-moving markets. He also emphasizes that Eightcap is committed to providing a wide range of tools and educational resources to enhance its clients' trading experience, enabling them to make smarter trading decisions.

With the new economic calendar, traders can leverage AI-powered advanced filtering to identify potential trading opportunities across 100+ countries and 1000+ macroeconomic events. The filtering technology utilizes bright and bold elements to highlight events with high, medium, and low-impact levels, helping traders prioritize their attention and focus on the most relevant events.

Andrew Lane, CEO of Acuity Trading, expressed enthusiasm for their partnership with Eightcap, a prominent online broker in the industry. He highlighted the potential to expand their reach and provide more traders with access to their powerful AI-based tools.

The new economic calendar will be available to all Eightcap clients and can be accessed via the Eightcap client portal. Additionally, traders can conveniently run the economic calendar as an EA tab on the MT4 or MT5 research terminal. This integration allows traders to access news, sentiment data, and other features within the same window, enhancing their user experience and enabling them to make more informed trading decisions.

About Eightcap

Eightcap is a top-tier derivatives provider established in Melbourne, Australia in 2009. The company offers its clients a diverse range of financial markets to trade on, including Forex, Indices, Shares, Commodities, and Cryptocurrency CFDs. Eightcap is authorized and regulated by several prominent financial regulatory bodies, including the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), and the Securities Commission of The Bahamas (SCB).

The company is committed to providing its clients with the best possible trading experience and continually strives to improve its platform. The partnership with Acuity Trading is a testament to this commitment, as it enables Eightcap to offer cutting-edge tools and resources to its clients.

For more information about Eightcap or the economic calendar, please see here.

Dukascopy is now enhancing its trading opportunities by introducing two new indices to the MT4 platform. Investors with Dukascopy Bank and Dukasocpy Europe Live accounts and Demo users can take advantage of these freshly added instruments for their portfolios.

Dukascopy customers can add the Volatility Index (VOL.IDX) and the South Africa Top 40 Index (SOA.IDX) to their trading portfolio. Also, it had recently expanded the list of CFDs with 28 Stock CFDs from Mexico, the Volatiltity Index (VOL.IDX/USD) and the South Africa Index (SOA.IDX/ZAR) for users of the proprietary trading platform – Jforex.

Dukascopy is continuously advancing the capabilities of its premier JForex4 platform, offering traders access to an ever-growing selection of 1,160 assets. These tools span from popular Forex currency pairs and gold bullion all the way to cryptocurrencies, stocks & ETFs.

MT4 is a complimentary trading platform with a limited list of trading instruments. In the near future, Dukascopy plans to announce the MT5 trading platform launch.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has announced the next steps to improve its Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). The proposal to implement the changes was presented a year ago due to the rising concerns regarding increasing costs.

Financial services firms regulated in the UK must contribute to FSCS, which guarantees compensation if any authorized member of the industry becomes insolvent or cannot meet clients' claims. The compensation scheme aims to provide additional protection for retail investors and increase confidence.

However, the local financial services providers report rising concerns that compensation liabilities could be a barrier to new companies looking to enter the market and to smaller players who may struggle to stay in business. It might reduce the availability of certain financial services in the UK.

"We welcome the constructive engagement and feedback which will inform the next phase of this work. We want to make sure the cost to the industry for providing vital protection to consumers through the FSCS is distributed in a fair and sustainable way – that the polluter pays. We're continuing our assertive action to prevent harm from happening in the first place, which should help reduce the levy over time," Sheldon Mills, the Executive Director of Consumers and Competition at the FCA, said.

The FCA began reviewing the compensation framework in December 2021 and accepted comments from interested parties until March 2022. On 14 December 2022, the regulator published a feedback statement highlighting the need to improve the regulated firms' behaviour to reduce FSCS calls.

The regulatory watchdog has already taken action to address current concerns. In line with its investment strategy, the FCA is moving to a stricter approach to prevent potentially harmful companies from entering the market. The institution has also imposed twice as many restrictions on firms to block the sale of the riskiest financial products.

After reviewing and addressing the industry's feedback, the FCA's next phase of the FSCS review will analyze compensation limits and consider whether their level for particular types of claims is appropriate.

In addition, the regulator wants to survey firms and consumers to raise awareness of the compensation scheme's impact on investment decisions and traders' confidence. In the third step, the FCA will analyze funding class thresholds checking whether they remain at appropriate levels.

Admirals, a global financial tech provider, has taken its services to Kenya following the granting of their license from the Capital Markets Authority. As one of the first online forex trading brokers in East Africa, Admirals is poised to make waves across this vibrant and growing market.

“Admirals hopes the achieving of this license shall assist further growth in Africa and grant access to a stringently regulated market,” Admirals said in a statement.

The new license comes six months after South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority licensed Admirals SA (Pty) Limited to provide contracts for difference (CFD) execution and share trading options in South Africa. Additionally, Admirals Groups AS opened a new office in Cape Town as part of its move to expand its client base in Africa.

Meanwhile, in a statement on Thursday, the company noted that its Cypriot and South African subsidiaries had signed an agreement to jointly take over Aglobe Investments Limited.

Details on the company's site show that the firm is its subsidiary in Seychelles. Aglobe Investments Limited is regulated as a securities dealer by the Financial Services Authority of Seychelles.

Electronic trading major Interactive Brokers introduces PortfolioAnalyst Beta, now offering an intuitive dashboard with allocation, attribution, performance, risk metrics and more without the hassle of downloading PDF/CSV reports.

Users of the solution can view side-by-side summary statistics and drill down into details with historical periods, benchmark comparison, and frequency selection.

Interactive Brokers regularly expands the capabilities of PortfolioAnalyst, a solution that consolidates, tracks and analyzes one’s complete financial performance.

The solution now supports custom Time Periods and Cumulative Performance Statistics reports. When selecting Time Period and/or Cumulative Performance Statistics you will be asked to Include Long and Short Breakout Yes|No on the next page.

In addition, there are new crypto connections for external accounts. Coinbase, Kraken and Gemini connections are now available to link in PortfolioAnalyst.

Finally, Interactive Brokers now offers PortfolioAnalyst for all paper accounts. Traders can test trading strategies, generate performance on prospective client portfolios and experience Interactive Brokers’ robust platform before opening an account.

Despite intense pressure from the US administration in the weeks leading up to the decision, OPEC+ ultimately approved a production cut of 2 million barrels daily, which resulted in an increase in oil prices for the United States, a decrease for Europe, and more stable prices for Asia.

According to Jake Sullivan, the US National Security Advisor, the President is disappointed by the shortsighted decision by OPEC+ to cut production quotas and the Biden Administration will also consult with Congress on additional tools and authorities to reduce OPEC+'s control over energy prices. However, he didn’t mention that the Keystone XL pipeline cancellation and the suspension of new oil and gas leases on public lands made by the Biden administration gave OPEC+ the upper hand.

Sweet Revenge?

According to oilprice.com, the decision by OPEC+ was undoubtedly influenced by market fundamentals. Still, it was also perhaps a reaction to Biden's characterization of Saudi Arabia and its crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), as "pariahs" for the murder of activist and supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, Jamal Khashoggi. Although it might have sounded good during the campaign, the crown prince cannot be overlooked in the relationship between America and the Kingdom.

Furthermore, OPEC+ was blamed for taking the Russian side. It was also forgotten that the Saudis worked hard to convince Russia, a significant oil producer, to join OPEC+ ensuring that its actions would comply with the group, which it finally did in 2016, and to prevent US companies from dominating the oil market—a reasonable move for an economic rival.

Demand Stalls

Other sources reported that OPEC reduced its forecast for demand growth this year by between 460,000 BPD and 2.64 million BPD on Wednesday, citing strong inflation and China's COVID-19 control measures' revival.

"The world economy has entered into a time of heightened uncertainty and rising challenges," OPEC said in its monthly report.

Moreover, the US Energy Department revised its domestic production and consumption forecasts. It now predicts only a 0.9% growth in consumption in 2023, down from an earlier prediction of a 1.7% increase. In addition, a 5.2% increase in crude production is predicted as opposed to the previously expected increase of 7.2%.

Medium-term Uptrend

The oil price has broken above the solid bearish trend line, implying further gains in the coming days. We might see higher prices if it trades above 85 USD. The target for bulls should be at the 200-day moving average, near 98 USD.

The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has once again updated its annual questions on cryptocurrency holdings and associated gains.

Most notably, the authority tweaked the 2022 draft instructions for tax form 1040 to include non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and stablecoins, replacing the term “virtual currency” with “digital assets”.

In the newly released draft of the individual income tax return, the IRS clarified that digital assets are “any digital representations of value that are recorded on a cryptographically secured distributed ledger or any similar technology. For example, digital assets include non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and virtual currencies, such as cryptocurrencies and stablecoins.”

The updated questionnaire states that taxpayers must disclose any kind of cryptocurrency acquisition including those received “as a reward, award, or payment for property or services” or “sold, exchanged, gifted, or otherwise disposed of a digital asset (or any financial interest in any digital asset).”

The IRS said it plans to make public criminal tax-evasion cases involving cryptocurrency, which opens a new front in the agency’s burgeoning scrutiny of the industry.

As described further in the petition, though taxpayers are required to report any associated profits and losses on their crypto dealings, the IRS’s experience “has demonstrated significant tax compliance deficiencies relating to cryptocurrencies and other digital assets.”

Based on its recent experiences with cryptocurrencies, the IRS believes that crypto transactions are not being properly reported on tax returns.  Among other reasons, the authority says there is no third-party reporting to the IRS on such transactions, and previous summonses served on other cryptocurrency dealers have revealed significant underreporting of such transactions.

Recently, there have been numerous reports emerging of tax authorities clamping down and going after cryptocurrency traders. The IRS also sent letters to taxpayers who might have failed to report income and pay the resulting tax from cryptocurrency transactions.

At the very core, the IRS still deems crypto assets to be property rather than currency for income tax purposes, the same as its regulatory guidance came out seven years ago. That means the authority will continue to tax crypto profits and losses like those for stocks, at capital gains rates.

The IRS has also addressed how to track the fair market value, capital gains, and losses in the context of virtual currencies. When a transaction is facilitated by a cryptocurrency exchange, the value of the taxed deal is the amount that was recorded by the platform in US dollars. Further, the taxpayer’s buy/sell price will determine whether a gain or loss has occurred as well as its duration.

Traders who want to take their trading to a higher level can use Trading signals. Commonly, signals help to have better insight and make better trading decisions. They alert traders when an asset is to break in one or another direction.
However, not all traders make use of trading signals. So, to be helpful, let’s see what trading signals are and how to make the best use of them.

What Are Trading Signals?

A trading signal is software sending traders alerts when a certain event happens. They are mostly composed of two main components - the technical analysis indicators and the condition triggering the alert.
For instance, a trading signal could be set to trigger if an asset breaks through its 50-day moving average. Here, the technical indicator would be the 50-day moving average, whereas the condition triggering the alert would be the break of the 50-day moving average.

Trading signals accommodate to identify assets that based on the ongoing market situation are likely to increase in value in the short or long term. If your prediction and sentiment prompt you that the economy is heading in a positive direction, you can use trading signals to find assets that are likely to increase in value based on a guess.

The Reasons to Use Trading Signals

Using trading signals, it is possible to improve your trading drastically. By setting them to identify assets headed for a breakout you can get in early before they start rising in value.
Besides, they help to identify the best assets for trading in the short and long term. Another advantage is that trading signals keep you from overtrading. For this, it is enough to set your alerts for assets that you would otherwise be tempted to trade too often.

Finding Good Trading Signals

Trading signals are possible to find almost anywhere but pay attention to the fact that they are not created equal. Some work well, yet others prove to be not so useful. The best trading signals help to make consistent profits.
Looking for trading signals, try to find the ones that work best for you and your trading style. It is possible to benefit from only one signal, however, it is possible to have luck with a variety of signals.

Trading a Signal

Before the start, choose a trading signal you like. Also, it is advisable to follow the signal and see how it works. Your next step should be to open a demo account and start executing trades using the parameters you are going to use on a real account. This way you will have a feel for how the signal works. Besides, after starting trading with a signal, keep a trading journal to track the performance of the signal and see how it works.

Find the Right Signal for You

Trading signals are numerous and all of them can be used in trading. Yet, it is essential to find the right signal for you. Pay attention to the fact, that some signals turn out to be better for short-term trading, whereas others are good for longer-term trading. Your priority is to find a signal that works well with your style and that you can use to make more profitable trades.