fxtraderjustin
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Hello Everyone -
This is Justin. Sorry if I’ve been away a lot, but things are plenty busy here, as some of you might be able to imagine. But it is time for me to make some comments. I’m just trying to pass along information, and I hope to answer any questions that you might have. At this time, things are very exciting. Allow me to make these points.
1) Our new website is launched. (www.efxgroup.com) Feel free to have a look around. At the bottom of the link following this paragraph, you will find the answers about “Safety of Funds” that states expressly our policy on how client funds are used/held. I feel that this is as straight-forward an answer as we can give. It hits the following points: that your funds are not commingled on a daily basis, that client funds are kept separate from our operating funds, but that in case of something extreme that would take MBTF/EFX under, client funds fall in line per CFTC guidelines. I can tell you that most platforms don’t operate that way. MB has been in business for over a decade, so we feel pretty good about the fact that it would take a “major outside event” to create the extreme situation. We are a very conservative company from an operations perspective, and it has served us well. In the real world, you can never say never, but I just feel that the statement given shows that we are doing things as much in favor of the client as can be expected. The stock side would be no different in terms of firm capital versus risk of customer funds, with the exception of the SIPC insurance level. Here’s the link. http://www.efxgroup.com/deposits.html
2) Here is the main point that I wanted to make today. As many might have surmised, after careful research, we have determined that it is not possible for us to incorporate in the manner that we would like MetaTrader 4 into our platform. We really tried. I can’t express that enough. I have made a concerted effort not to mention any other platform by name on these boards, and I plan to continue to do that. But, let me say this. ANY PLATFORM that is offering MT4 is, by definition of the way that their software works, a deal desk. And, again without mentioning anyone in particular, I think one NON deal desk platform basically bought MT4 with the intent of offering it to clients and realized after the fact that they couldn’t get it to work with their system just like we discovered in our due diligence. But, since they had already bought the license, they tried to take a shortcut and ended up in trouble. Again, I’m speculating a little, but I don’t think it is a reach to see what happened based on what we now know. Let me explain one example of where the issues lie.
When someone is operating a deal desk, the desk either fills your order or doesn’t. That’s it. There is NO SUCH THING in the deal desk world as a “partial fill.” So, let’s say that you are using a system that automates black box trading through an expert advisor type of service. You set a series of parameters where the buying and selling is done based on a moving average crossover with limits within three pips of the crossover occurring. On a NON deal desk system like ours, it is possible to get a partial fill. That is an AUTOMATIC possibility of a non deal desk, because your fill isn’t based on whether we wanted to fill you or not but whether there was enough size there or not. There is only so much available at any price. Most of the time, that amounts to lots of liquidity. But, there are times in a fast market when it doesn’t. So, think about it. You set your black box to trade 20 lots. On one trigger, only 8 get filled. The problem is that MT4 doesn’t know how to account for this. It still wants to close out 20 lots when the sell signal comes in. So, it sells 20 and you are now short 12. That’s a problem. Now, again, I don’t want to point fingers, but we just couldn’t get a lot of cooperation in terms of altering the system to adjust for these sorts of factors, and I’ll just leave it up to all of you to make assumptions of why that might be.
The bottom line, again, is that MT4 works only on deal desk systems, and, as we have discussed ad nauseum on these boards, we simply aren’t one. So we had to pass. Believe me; we realize that a lot of people like MT4. There were a lot of options on the table, such as using our quotes with MT4 but routing orders to a deal desk. That just isn’t where we wanted to go. It’s not how we run our company.
So, that said, what happens now? Well, if you go to the website and look at the front page, the answer lies there. I’m not going to give details at this time, but we are far along in the process. Much further than some might imagine. And BETWEEN here and there, we’ll have some exciting short-term solutions for people, some of which could be announced literally within a matter of weeks. But ultimately, we feel like we will have the exact solution that everyone has always wanted in the Forex markets, and it is coming, not LATE in 2007, but sometime in the New Year.
In the meantime, our Navigator product continues to function well, and we are working hard on making the Forex Pro product into something that Forex-only traders will love. The Navigator is an all-encompassing platform that is built for stock, options, futures, and Forex traders. The Pro will ultimately be very exciting, and let me say now that we haven’t even scratched the surface of what the “wings” or “tabs” will provide. We’re very excited about taking Forex to the next level and being the Forex-dedicated arm of MBTF. I’ll answer questions as I can, but I promise you that anything that says “Hey, tell me about Project Omega” won’t get a big response right now. ;-)
Justin LeBlang
EFX Group
This is Justin. Sorry if I’ve been away a lot, but things are plenty busy here, as some of you might be able to imagine. But it is time for me to make some comments. I’m just trying to pass along information, and I hope to answer any questions that you might have. At this time, things are very exciting. Allow me to make these points.
1) Our new website is launched. (www.efxgroup.com) Feel free to have a look around. At the bottom of the link following this paragraph, you will find the answers about “Safety of Funds” that states expressly our policy on how client funds are used/held. I feel that this is as straight-forward an answer as we can give. It hits the following points: that your funds are not commingled on a daily basis, that client funds are kept separate from our operating funds, but that in case of something extreme that would take MBTF/EFX under, client funds fall in line per CFTC guidelines. I can tell you that most platforms don’t operate that way. MB has been in business for over a decade, so we feel pretty good about the fact that it would take a “major outside event” to create the extreme situation. We are a very conservative company from an operations perspective, and it has served us well. In the real world, you can never say never, but I just feel that the statement given shows that we are doing things as much in favor of the client as can be expected. The stock side would be no different in terms of firm capital versus risk of customer funds, with the exception of the SIPC insurance level. Here’s the link. http://www.efxgroup.com/deposits.html
2) Here is the main point that I wanted to make today. As many might have surmised, after careful research, we have determined that it is not possible for us to incorporate in the manner that we would like MetaTrader 4 into our platform. We really tried. I can’t express that enough. I have made a concerted effort not to mention any other platform by name on these boards, and I plan to continue to do that. But, let me say this. ANY PLATFORM that is offering MT4 is, by definition of the way that their software works, a deal desk. And, again without mentioning anyone in particular, I think one NON deal desk platform basically bought MT4 with the intent of offering it to clients and realized after the fact that they couldn’t get it to work with their system just like we discovered in our due diligence. But, since they had already bought the license, they tried to take a shortcut and ended up in trouble. Again, I’m speculating a little, but I don’t think it is a reach to see what happened based on what we now know. Let me explain one example of where the issues lie.
When someone is operating a deal desk, the desk either fills your order or doesn’t. That’s it. There is NO SUCH THING in the deal desk world as a “partial fill.” So, let’s say that you are using a system that automates black box trading through an expert advisor type of service. You set a series of parameters where the buying and selling is done based on a moving average crossover with limits within three pips of the crossover occurring. On a NON deal desk system like ours, it is possible to get a partial fill. That is an AUTOMATIC possibility of a non deal desk, because your fill isn’t based on whether we wanted to fill you or not but whether there was enough size there or not. There is only so much available at any price. Most of the time, that amounts to lots of liquidity. But, there are times in a fast market when it doesn’t. So, think about it. You set your black box to trade 20 lots. On one trigger, only 8 get filled. The problem is that MT4 doesn’t know how to account for this. It still wants to close out 20 lots when the sell signal comes in. So, it sells 20 and you are now short 12. That’s a problem. Now, again, I don’t want to point fingers, but we just couldn’t get a lot of cooperation in terms of altering the system to adjust for these sorts of factors, and I’ll just leave it up to all of you to make assumptions of why that might be.
The bottom line, again, is that MT4 works only on deal desk systems, and, as we have discussed ad nauseum on these boards, we simply aren’t one. So we had to pass. Believe me; we realize that a lot of people like MT4. There were a lot of options on the table, such as using our quotes with MT4 but routing orders to a deal desk. That just isn’t where we wanted to go. It’s not how we run our company.
So, that said, what happens now? Well, if you go to the website and look at the front page, the answer lies there. I’m not going to give details at this time, but we are far along in the process. Much further than some might imagine. And BETWEEN here and there, we’ll have some exciting short-term solutions for people, some of which could be announced literally within a matter of weeks. But ultimately, we feel like we will have the exact solution that everyone has always wanted in the Forex markets, and it is coming, not LATE in 2007, but sometime in the New Year.
In the meantime, our Navigator product continues to function well, and we are working hard on making the Forex Pro product into something that Forex-only traders will love. The Navigator is an all-encompassing platform that is built for stock, options, futures, and Forex traders. The Pro will ultimately be very exciting, and let me say now that we haven’t even scratched the surface of what the “wings” or “tabs” will provide. We’re very excited about taking Forex to the next level and being the Forex-dedicated arm of MBTF. I’ll answer questions as I can, but I promise you that anything that says “Hey, tell me about Project Omega” won’t get a big response right now. ;-)
Justin LeBlang
EFX Group
