Capital Forex Pro

Capital Forex Pro is a division of the London Capital Group.  London Capital Group is described as a dynamic and rapidly growing financial services company, which was launched in the mid-1990s. That company is also described as active in institutional foreign exchange and derivatives brokering.  Capital Forex Pro goes on to describe itself as a second-tier prime broker providing financial institutions, hedge funds and professional traders totally unrestricted access to the Forex market.  This access is achieved by way of multibank portals.  That allows trade with multiple counterparties the best rates with deep liquidity using a prime broker’s credit line. The prime broker for Capital Forex Pro is a member of the worldwide credit link settlements (CLS). CLS was established to eliminate cross-border credit risks associated with currency settlements.

Capital Forex Pro is constantly looking to forge new partnerships that provide solutions in the Forex markets.

Capital Forex Pro recommends the use of the Currenex platform for its clients, however it offers access to a variety of other trading platforms including FXAll, Lava FX, HotSpot FXi or EBS Prime of  Prime. Clearly a financial professional may be required to evaluate the offerings available from Capital Forex Pro.

Upon opening an account a client will receive a personal account manager. This will provide that client direct contact with Capital Forex Pro and allow the company to respond to individual needs in the most time efficient manner possible. Individuals will receive the trading platforms of their choice and back office software (most likely Spectrum Back Office) from Capital Forex Pro that provides them with straight through processing with real-time position keeping statements, unrealized and realized profit and loss, real-time marketing and positioning.

Experienced traders and financial professionals may find much to like at capitalforexpro.com. Those new to the Forex market may need to consider other options.

InterForex

InterForex chooses to describe itself as a fast growing online CFD and Foreign Exchange brokerage firm offering commission-free Spot FX & CFD trading. InterForex describes its clientele as “institutions and money managers.”

The company operates out of New York City with another office in Argentina. Any sort of history of InterForex is unavailable at www.interforex.net. This makes gauging Interforex’s growth and importance somewhat problematic.

On its web site InterForex offers fairly comprehensive descriptions of both CFD and Foreign Exchange trading and the risks and rewards that those markets can present to traders. It can be somewhat difficult to distinguish the general descriptions of CFD and Forex trading offered on the web site from the specific policies, procedures and products that InterForex offers to its clients.

InterForex does offer its own trading platform to clients eponymously called InterForex. The platform is available in two versions –  Basic, Java based, and Advanced,  which is a desktop application –  Win-trader. Inherent in each version of the platform is the ability to execute numerous types of orders, hedging and trailing stops. The platform is appropriate for Spot Forex, CFD, Futures, or Indexes trading environments.

Platform features include:
•    Secure login right from desktop or browser (for the Java version)
•    Instant Auto Execution, No Negotiations or intervention, hedging
•    Over 160 Instruments (including Forex, CFD, Shares, Indices)
•    Easy first-time setup
•    24 hour charts, streaming news and economic event calendar
•    Up to the second price quotes
•    24-hour customer support

A practice (or demo) account is offered by InterForex to new traders and potential clients. Specifics regarding that option aren’t described at www.interforex.net.

A link to “Live Support” brings up a web form that needs to harvest your email address. One can hope that actual clients of InterForex experience livelier support than that.

The Collective FX

The Collective FX is definitely not a group of wild-eyed special effects bohemians from the Hollywood Hills. The Collective FX is a group of autotraders who created a brokerage for themselves to create for themselves (and others) the absolute best trading environment. As you may know autotrading in financial markets like forex cedes control of some or all of the decision-making and trading actions to software designed to interpret market trends and charts faster and better than humans can.

The Collective FX suggests that it is more profitable to participate in the market as one’s own broker when trading foreign exchange. The collective aspect of this operation involves a group of traders who created a brokerage for themselves in order to obtain the absolute best institutional pricing and spreads. Additionally this collective approach to the market allows members to have complete control over their quotes as opposed to brokers controlling some or all aspects of the quoting process.

Rightly or wrongly the Collective FX characterizes brokerages as focused on making money by charging clients fees, commissions and widening the spread so they make money on every trade a client places. In contrast to that approach Collective FX’s profit motive is said to be derived solely from its own trading activities. This is said to eliminate the “us” and “them” mentality that prevails in trading traditionally with a traditional brokerage.

It’s possible that the best way to get a handle on this somewhat unorthodox approach to trading is to download the free The CollectiveFX Trading Demo. The sales pitch at www.thecollectivefx.com is certainly aggressive. If that approach is based on pride in a solution that offers increased profitability to the ordinary forex trader or on a desperate attempt to sell an approach to trading that is of dubious utility should be left to you to decide. Regardless, this option may suit experienced traders much better than neophytes.

CapTrader

At the web site CapTrader.com the German company CapTrader proclaims that Chairman and CEO Rafael Neustadt founded it around twelve years ago. CapTrader serves institutional and professional traders with a variety of electronically traded products including stocks, options, futures, forex, bonds and funds. The company operates worldwide. All tolled the firm and its affiliates execute upwards of 1,000,000 trades on a daily basis. Its services extend to both private and institutional clients.

In general leverages are offered at 40:1. The minimum transaction size amounts to 3,500 Euros. Stop orders and limit orders are supported, as well as trailing stop orders. The absence of demo account availability may be indicative of CapTrader’s tendency to cater to a wide variety of experienced traders whether they be institutional or private. Like other trader-oriented sites http://www.cfdspros.com/brokers/cap-trader offers a window into the news of the day that pertains to the worldwide financial markets.

Although CapTrader may have significant market presence its web presence seems to be only a part of (or hosted by) a web site named www.cfdspros.com. That web site appears to act as an umbrella site for a number of other financial market oriented companies. Five other companies besides CapTrader appear under the letter C in the alphabetic listing found at www.cfdspros.com.

In actual fact there is another web site at www.captrader.com, which appears to offer more substantial information about CapTrader and its products. At that site software packages called CapTrader, WebTrader and MobileTrader are described as the platform components used by the company and a demo version of the platform seems to be available.

CapTrader’s support services are highlighted by live chat and a callback service that operates weekdays from 8 am to 10 pm. Where those times are local is not clearly indicated.

CapTrader’s educational seminars and Webinars are available for free.

FXPrice

On the face of it www.fxprice.com appears to be a site designed by Franco phones. Linguistic hurdles can be quickly surmounted, however, by clicking on the American Flag icon or one associated with the Spanish language found in the upper right hand corner of the landing page. The FXPrice LLC mission statement is very straightforward:

“FXPrice LLC was established by a group of top foreign exchange trading professionals to serve only one purpose: to provide valuable foreign exchange trading information to forex investors.”

FXPrice's Foreign Exchange services are provided in partnership with FX Solutions LLC, a leading market maker in online foreign exchange trading.

One can also use the facilities found on the FXPrice website to open an account and start trading in the forex market. Additionally FXPrice will provide real-time forex quotes, real time forex commentary, forex charts and forex news. Those new to the foreign exchange market can open a demo account at www.fxprice.com. They will need to fill out an email form to get a 60-day, $10,000 demo account for free. As with other similar offers one can experiment with trading in currencies to get a consequence-free feel for how the ups and inevitable downs of the forex market unfold over time.

If one has any experience in this market the next question often relates to the trading platform used by a company like FXPrice. The answer is that FXPrice recommends FX Solutions' proprietary Global Trading System. FXPrice touts this Windows based tool as providing traders “freedom and power”. Links are provided to PDF-based manuals that further describe what the software can do. Other software tools are promised for FXPrice clients in the near future. A link is provided for email support in French or English. A link to live support does not appear to be working yet.

KerfordFX

Kerford Investments provides direct access to the international financial market, while offering specialized trading and execution services in Foreign Exchange, Metals and Over-the-Counter markets. Its marketing efforts seem to be directed at small- to mid-sized traders. Nothing more regarding Kerford Investments’ history or the regulatory environment in which they operate can be found at its web site.

Since we write in English, we expect to communicate with an investment company that speaks our language with a reasonable degree of proficiency. We found a few too many lapses in the presentation of the Kerford Investment story at www.kerfordfx.com. A sentence such as “Kerford with its ability to care group of clients and its global reach strengthen the relationship in trading,” is not a confidence builder.

In its “About Us” section Kerford Investments puts forth the claim that “with our proprietary software, you can now have the benefit of real-time and reliable information, 24/7, from around the world…” We understand proprietary to mean that a company owns something like software. It usually indicates at least a somewhat exclusive use of software. Making the widely available platform such as MetaTrader 4 available to one’s clients doesn’t qualify as “proprietary” in our opinion. That is all that Kerford appears to do.

In the Trading Platform section of Kerford Investments web site we are informed that “Kerford Investments achieved a number of recognitions as one of the best multi-product trading platforms available.” A promised Walkthrough of the trading platform is “Under Development ”.

Kerford Investments appears to want to establish a worldwide trading presence. However links to sites in the Americas, Lebanon, South Africa and a host of other locales are either labeled as Under Development or ask the web visitor to “Check back soon”.

A live chat option appears to be functional, but Kerford appears right now to be more talk than substance.

MarkeTrade

MarkeTrade.com describes itself as a service of WR Hambrecht + Co. In fact it is a fully owned division of that aforementioned company. MarkeTrade.com describes its operation as dedicated "to the needs of the Asian-American community." One specific need is the desire by members of that community to "use their native language for daily communication."

The company's mission, since it’s founding over ten years ago, has been to fuse technology with traditional trading services, which, presumably, are non-technical in nature. Nowadays MarkeTrade.com offers its clients Web-basing trading and direct access to Electric Communication Network (ECN) trading. This is a private order matching system maintained separately from public markets such as NASDAQ and NYSE.

The platforms offered by MarkeTrade.com include Marketrade.PRO designed for frequent traders and featuring Level I and II real-time streaming quotes, routing of orders directly to ECNs, real-time buying power calculation and daily profit and loss analysis all wrapped up in what is described as a user-friendly interface. Also available is MarkeTrade.BASIC which offers commission rates starting at $5.95, a minimum of only $200 to open an account, Level I streaming quotes and free real-time quotes and real-time confirmations and buying power calculations. MarkeTrade also offers clients the option to invest in fixed income products that offer less risk than day trader type products and access to mutual fund opportunities as well as retirement plans.

The best place find out how things work at www.marketrade.com is the FAQ section. This section very thoroughly outlines the conditions and features of the products that the company makes available to its clients. Information on how client investment funds are secured is also referenced there.

Applying for an account at MarkeTrade is simple. Each step to apply is listed clearly on their site walking you through the process. There are pages throughout the website that explains each process to opening an account, and what do if you will need a foreign account etc. You can also access a forex demo account before you open a live account. MarkeTrade is known for their account protection and there is no additional cost for it. The site lists customer support numbers in case you need help applying.

Customer Support Reps are available 6:15 am - 4:00 pm Monday - Friday PST to assist clients with questions on trading or other procedures.