I had the chance to speak with Paul Hayward, MD EMEA, Asaf Yigal, Co-Founder of Currensee (the social trading platform that OANDA recently acquired) and Stuart McPhee of OANDA.
In the conversation we discussed various topics that are certainly of interest to traders.
Currensee and OANDA
The integration of Currensee is going very well. Execution is naturally the fastest for Currensee users that are OANDA clients, but the platform remains open to clients of other brokers as well.
Currensee has “Trade Leaders” that traders can follow and copy. With quite a few copy trading technologies out there since Currensee launched, Asaf Yigal stresses the main difference: the due diligence process for Currensee Trade Leaders is extremely thorough, making it very hard for new traders to become leaders.
They are tested during a long time, to see there aren’t big draw downs. The names of the Trade Leaders do not change too often. “We believe in continuity”, says Yigal.
Around 25 Trade Leaders are currently active in the system and most of them trade with OANDA. Currensee is still not supported on the OANDA mobile app, but this integration is in the works. Another interesting feature that is being considered is sending alerts on specific trades that the clients follow.
Directions for OANDA
After the management changes, OANDA is pushing for more innovation and refocusing. Instead of doing things in house like it used to be, the firm now looks for cooperations with the growing variety of tech innovations out there.
The idea is to provide traders a wider product choice and for the company to become more innovative. The partnership programs are led by Trevor Young in Toronto.
In addition, OANDA execs said that the company wants traders to be more successful in 2014, and part of that is putting an emphasis on education.
The Industry
Regulation: Both OANDA and Currensee see regulation as a very positive thing and have cooperated closely. Regulation is important to protect the customers. While US regulation is considered by some as too tough, the end result is that there are far less fraud cases in the US than in other markets. This is good for everybody.
Forex growth: stock markets have been on the rise recently, and this doesn’t help growth in forex. However, the Global Financial Crisis has brought more people to foreign exchange, and once they had a taste of forex they stayed and didn’t necessarily go back to stocks when equity markets recovered.
Asia is still a growth engine thanks to increased wealth. Germany has a great potential: a strong, sophisticated trading base and a strong appetite. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is also making a comeback after some not-too-good years.
Further reading: Coding your first expert advisor – Writing the code
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