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Outlook for 2012: Global Interest Rate Hurricane – What Next?by Richard Olsen at Olsen InvestmentIn 2011, interest rate markets for Greek government bonds bolted and interest rates skyrocketed raising the specter of a sovereign debt crisis for the whole of Europe. Overall, interest rates around the world have remained at record lows thanks to the maneuvering of central banks; 10-year US treasuries for example pay less than 2 percent.Investors are increasingly impatient and there is a rapidly growing demand for equity capital that has to be pumped into the economy to salvage balance sheets. Governments and central banks are already fully leveraged and do not have sufficient resources to keep interest rates low indefinitely. Fixed income markets around the world will unravel; this will send shock waves across the global economy.

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Forex Person of The Year 2011 - Nominees

Everyone knows TIME’s Person of the Year that “features and profiles a person, group, idea or object that “for better or for worse, …has done the most to influence the events of the year”, as perfectly summarized by Wikipedia.As many other media in the world, we wanted to also designate our own Forex Person of the Year, following the model of the worldwide renowned newsmagazine. The idea is to pay tribute to a person, a team of people and a project that might not have been in the big headlines but that positively contributed to make the Forex world better in 2011. This market is huge and full of professionals who work every day to make the business easier and better. Our focus has been innovation and quality, and not necessarily going for the most famous names.We present you today the 5 finalists on our list. This is a short list, and we’re aware that many other teams and people could have been nominated. It’s biased by our sensibility and our work, and we imagine every single trader has his or her own person of the year, and that’s the beauty of it.Next week we will announce who we’ve finally elected for this title (that is going to be tough for us to decide!).Let us thank and congratulate these people for their great contribution to the Forex market. They are very promising names.Keep up with the high quality, good ideas and hard work, everyone!Michael Greenberg - Founder of Forex Magnates: Forex Magnates work in 2011 has been outstanding, converting the site as the site of reference for Forex Industry news with a 60% growth in visits from previous year. Forex Magnates biggest improvement of the year has been the launching of the quarterly report of the retail Forex industry. The quarterly report has become a hit and sold several hundreds of copies with the biggest brokers, banks, software firms among its clients. A two thumbs up work… no doubt about it.Bijoy Kar, Howard Friend, Ron William - MIG Bank Research Team:MIG bank has done a superb selection of industry professionals in building its Research Team which is comprised of holders of the coveted designations CFA, CMT and MSTA. They brought a wealth of financial market experience to MIG Bank’s clients and also to FXstreet.com’s visitors who are regularly delighted by presentations of the team members. Each presentation is a major breakthrough in analysis and trading techniques. Other research products developed by MIG Bank Research Team such as the Market Outlook reports and Trading Signals, have also grown to a force to reckon with in the Forex industry. For all the efforts MIG Bank’s Research team has made to help the uneducated public in this rite of passage to the informed club, goes our nomination.Jeff Langin, Demme Wiggins, Meherban Faroogh - 1000 Pip Club:Becoming a successful Forex trader is a monumental task. 1000 Pip Club made it possible in an efficient and comprehensive way. First to highlight is a superb organization of the educational material: divided in two levels, Kadet and Pro, all required areas of knowledge are presented in a well choreographed balance. Second, vast areas such as technical and fundamental analysis are blended into practical intermarket studies, making of the student a jack in all techniques and a master in some. While the members area comprises 150+ hours of training videos, chart studies, articles, and definitions, what most impressed us was how well it has been organized. A firm belief in team philosophy, a mature and professional mindset and the commitment to the goal of personal improvement are those intangibles that make the FXstreet team nominate 1000 Pip Club.Alex and Pavel Rekun - MyfxbookMyfxbook is a Forex community and a free service for Forex traders enabling them to analyze their Forex trading account, share their trades, publish their statement, and more. It was opened to the public on August 1st, 2009 after being developed offline for almost 1 year. Although most start-up companies require initial funding to get things going, Alex Rekun and his brother Pavel decided to do it on their own in order to have complete control over Myfxbook. They started as 2 developers and are now 5 in total.After 2.5 years online, myfxBook is still experiencing a tremendous growth with an increase of +123.58% in pageviews between 2010 and 2011, +123.82% in Users Registrations, +163.52% in Trading Accounts. Those data confirms that myfxBook is in the right path and creating the tools traders are missing in the online Forex world.Rodolfo Festa Bianchet - Trade Interceptor Trade Interceptor is a multibroker platform. From a single interface, users can watch bid and ask prices and trade with several brokers simultaneously, test their strategies using various broker trading execution models, watch RFX Best proprietary aggregation feed, decide which broker better suits their trading needs, and easily manage multiple trading accounts.In February 2011- after 18 months of beta - the Live Trading on the platform was launched. Trade Interceptor possesses the best mobile technology at the moment on IOS and Android (they have just released a kindle fire edition) and is in the first positions on iPhone/iPad app under Forex all over the world (for example first in japan for iPad).The entire registration database is now more than 125.000 users. Between 2010 and 2011, the non expiring free registrations increased of 391%. The new free registration rate is averaging 9000/10,000 per month. There are around 2.5 million sessions per month with an average length of 13 minutes each. The future of Trade Interceptor is promising, and 2012 should be the year of consolidation of this impressive start.

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What are Central Banks Expected to do in 2012?by Kathy LienThe New Year has begun and it is important to see what the market is pricing in for central banks this year. As you may know, central bank rate hike expectations change often but as of last week, most central banks are expected to keep monetary policy unchanged in the coming year but one is expected to ease aggressively. Find out who below!

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What are Central Banks Expected to do in 2012?by Kathy LienThe New Year has begun and it is important to see what the market is pricing in for central banks this year. As you may know, central bank rate hike expectations change often but as of last week, most central banks are expected to keep monetary policy unchanged in the coming year but one is expected to ease aggressively. Find out who below!

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Hi everyone

I’ve been told that a new Forex brokerage is being created in Cyprus, and will extend in Europe, Switzerland and Asia.

Remember this name: JIFFIX.COM

The company hasn’t gone live yet, but should be going live later this Spring.

The Company was founded by several members of the ex-management team from Synthesis Bank, team comes from from Credit Suisse, UBS and ACM.

Interesting…

Francesc

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Currencies lure traders as investment proxyThe Wall Street JournalForeign exchange is finding new fans among hedge funds and global macro-focused asset managers, as tighter correlations between currencies and other assets prompt investors to use it as a proxy for other markets.With a persistent state of crisis in the eurozone over the past year, key asset classes are now moving in lock step, leaving the correlation between the euro’s exchange rate against the dollar and US equity returns near historic highs. Oil prices and the euro are also unusually closely linked, while the Australian dollar’s tie-in with global stocks is rock-solid.To some investors, that is frustrating, because it hampers efforts to diversify returns. But others are taking it as a cue to trade currencies as a proxy for less liquid assets elsewhere.

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Perception is almost everything in trading for Mark Whistler: price, value, news, technicals,… are manmade perceptions. The key for the trade is then to “understands price relativity, and being able to align or separate his perspective with/from the unmanageable expectations of other market participants.”

Mark Whistler is a full-time trader and author of several books on Swing Trading, Trading Psychology and Volatility who investigated a lot the sentiment and news technologies in the markets. He believes that markets and news are inefficient by nature and “the only real way information technologies will assist the masses, is to help dissect information to make it more easily understandable.”

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CFTC fines long-running Ponzi schemeBy CFTCLawThe CFTC has secured a federal consent order against Texas resident Larry Benny Groover for defrauding customers and misappropriating client money as part of a foreign exchange (“forex”) Ponzi scheme. Groover has been ordered to pay .69 million in restitution and civil monetary penalty. Relief defendant Joanne Groover is also required to disgorge the ,890 in ill-gotten gains she received as a result of her husband’s misconduct.

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January 16-22 Podium
#1 Sam Seiden - Major Forex Moves for 2012 and The All Star Entry - Lesson and Application

#2 Rob Helean - Using Confirmation For Trade Entry

#3 Chris Capre - Price Action Trading: Analysis and setups on any time frame

#4 David Pegler - Getting The Day Started Right

#5 Boris Schlossberg - How to start the New Year off Right Daytrading FX

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Financial News: Nasdaq Enters Currency BattleBy Tom Osborn Of FINANCIAL NEWSNasdaq OMX Group Inc. (NDAQ), the U.S.-European exchange operator, is planning to hire staff in European derivatives clearing ahead of new clearing rules coming in this year.The exchange is planning to start clearing non-deliverable forward (NDF) currency trades in Europe, according to two people familiar with the matter. Nasdaq declined to comment.The move will put Nasdaq OMX in competition with incumbents LCH.Clearnet and CME Clearing Europe.NDFs facilitate trading in currencies that are not freely tradable, such as the Chinese yuan or Indian rupee.

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