This week we take a closer look at FxPro. FxPro was founded in 2006 on the island of Cyprus. In the 7 short years since its establishment this broker has gone from being a new kid on the block to a FX heavyweight headquartered in London that is now synonymous with quality trading tools and transparent business practices. In the Forex Magnates Industry Survey for Q3 of 2013 FxPro is listed as 10th in the world as far as trade volumes go, which is nothing to be sniffed at.
This award winning broker made its way into the spotlight with some very high visibility sponsorships that have seen its now instantly recognisable logo plastered on premiership football team shirts and formula one vehicles among other things.
Lately, however, the broker has been noticeably less visible as far as major advertising activity is concerned, but this doesn’t mean that they’ve been resting on their laurels. In the last couple of years the company has taken a different turn which has seen it bring some ground-breaking products and services to the table as well as a complete change of direction as far as its business model is concerned.
Within 24 months the company has released FxPro Quant, an amazing bit of web-based programming that allows FxPro users to create their own automated trading algorithms by dragging and dropping technical indicators and mathematical/logical operators that can be hooked up in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. So without the need of any coding language whatsoever, you are now able to formalise your personal trading strategy and turn it into a robot that can be loaded into MT4 and take over trading duties from you. It is quite an astonishing development, especially for a humble retail broker, and well ahead of its time. This release is emblematic of the direction that FxPro has started moving in as it turns its attention to providing its clients with advanced trading tools that were once only available to institutional investors.
FxPro Library is another development the company has brought to its clients of late. For those interested in exploring algorithmic trading but without the know-how or patience to formalise a strategy of their own, FxPro Library allows users to access a huge catalogue of ready to trade third party algorithms that are rated according to performance, many of which are completely free of charge (even the paid ones are available to FxPro clients at a discount). This is the second of FxPro’s offerings geared for algo-traders, albeit of a slightly lower level than those that would get some mileage out of FxPro Quant.
Continuing the algo-trading theme FxPro also recently released FxPro VPS, a paid service for their algorithmic traders that gives them access to a remote virtual private server onto which they can load and run their trading algorithms without even needing to have their own MT4 terminal open. This protects trading robots from any interruptions on the trader’s end, as well as reducing latency when it comes to communicating with FxPro’s own servers.
Then we come to FxPro Vault, a money management service that allows FxPro customers to transfer funds from one central account to all of their other FxPro trading accounts. This reduces the need for constant deposits and also protects a client’s funds from open positions as Vault capital is untouchable, regardless of how bad a trade is going.
Finally we come to FxPro SuperTrader, the company’s newest and in many ways most ambitious offering. Taking a leaf out of the copy-trading book, then screwing it up, throwing it away and going right back to the drawing board, FxPro has attempted to develop a copy/mirror trading platform that suffers from none of the pitfalls of these types of trading facilities. Essentially FxPro
SuperTrader aims to bring an investment style much more familiar to fund managers than day traders to the retail sphere. FxPro SuperTrader empowers users to select from a variety of trading strategies supplied by trade leaders that have gone through a tough due diligence analysis of their trading performance in order to be approved. A SuperTrader investor can choose strategies based on advanced trading stats available to them. They can allocate funds to any that catch their attention, set their own personal risk controls and then have the strategies do the heavy lifting for them, opening and closing positions while the investor is left free to analyse what’s on offer and pick the next strategy that will make him or her a few more bucks.
The quick turnaround of these impressive offerings suggests a broker that means business and is investing heavily in its own products rather than on just putting its name out there. In fact the change in focus has been so sweeping that many traders are not even aware of what FxPro has been busying itself with of late.
The other great change in the company’s running has been the adoption of the Agency Model, which essentially means that the company’s dealing desk is no-longer an intervening factor in the trades of its clients. FxPro now only profits from the commissions it charges on its ECN platform and the spread markups it makes to its MT4 price feeds. This goes hand in hand with all the other products it has recently brought to the market because in aligning its interests with those of its clients it now behooves FxPro to do everything in its power to improve the edge of its clients. Offering them a suite of state of the art trading tools to help them make the most of their trading activities obviously fits in seamlessly with this new turn.
FxPro is one to keep an eye on. The change in direction has led to a slight crisis of identity in which the company seems troubled with how to market itself, and has indeed slipped a bit from the consciousness of many traders, however a closer look a the broker leads us to believe that FxPro may just be the best kept secret going in online Forex.
