PipStop

Just got word from a friend of mine who works at Omniture – “the” web analytics company based in Utah – that Adobe is acquiring it. It’s a big deal – valued at $1.8 billion.

This is off the heels that Intuit acquired Mint yesterday for $170 million.

In late July one of my favourite “model” companies Zappos was acquired by one of my favourite online retailer – Amazon for $928 million.

What does this mean?

It means a couple of big things to me.

1. Companies are meeting liquidity events now, and that’s encouraging to see,

2. And in a selfish sort of way, as we continue to build TradingMetro into the one-stop marketplace for online traders, I hope to continue to lead the charge in cultivating the customer first ethos we have here and of guaranteed satisfaction. As we continue to develop, build our team and fulfill our vision, perhaps we can be a part of something greater in the future.

I’m just watching a Monday Night Football game right now (San Diego at Oakland) and the nature of competitive sports is to win. I have a disposition of wanting to win too. It’s the competitor in me, one who was raised playing sports, and my motto, which has become muted with age, has been “it’s only fun, if you win.”

It’s a mindset that can do some real damage to traders. It helped me to blow out my first few trading accounts, and as I look around there are far too many trading “solutions” out there that ONLY focus on win percentage.

The matter of managing your trades is extremely important, and the approach is the foundation to your trading. I’ve talked to too many traders who are just seeking the next strategy that will work for them.

So the headline is not to say that winning doesn’t matter – but it’s not a front burner item for me, and ought not to be for most traders. Learn to trade. Learn to condition your mind. Learn how to approach and fulfill your trading goals.

As TradingMetro continues to develop the world’s first marketplace for online traders, we are continually seeking the best trading solutions’ providers. One of our newest partners is Gordon Philips and the Institute of Higher Earning. Gordon has a refreshing outlook on trading and is very sharp in his trading approach – an approach that many traders can learn a great deal  from.

A recent video Gordon recorded, which is entitled “Managing Draw Down Across Multiple Open Forex Trades” is below.

Since the announcement of FXCM Canada that it was pulling out of the BC market in August, I have been absolutely bombarded with questions from BC residents – especially those FXCM Canada clients of what to do.

The option of transferring ones account to MF Global Canada (MF Global FX) – judging by the feedback I am receiving – doesn’t seem to satisfy traders. Indeed, when traders who are used to the margin levels they have been trading at, look at the margins offered by MF Global FX (which I personally don’t think are unreasonable at all – the whole purpose is to protect traders) they start looking elsewhere.

So what is elsewhere? If you’re a BC resident what do you do? Who do you open an account with? The global nature of the Forex market has reputable forex dealers doing business around the world. We only have to look south of the border to see some of the largest dealers not doing business in BC for one reason or another – only the BCSC truly knows.

As someone mentioned to me the other day, “The BCSC must be looking at things and think, if we can get all the Forex dealers to LEAVE BC, then the problem of people losing money in Forex goes away.”

In the past few years we’ve seen a number of dealers TRY to get into BC – FX Solutions and Forex.com being two – and both ended up white labeling their offerings through Questrade – which is a dubious dealer, devoid of any type of helpful customer service. I can only imagine that both of those big dealers are disappointed with the arrangement they have with Questrade.

So enough of the riff-raff, who are the ones who are registered with the BCSC you ask? Well, not only is the BCSC registration important here, but IIROC registration is a necessity. In December I posted Part I of Opening a Forex Account in BC, and this is the revision to that.

Registered with IIROC and BCSC:

- Interactive Brokers
- MF Global Canada
- Trade Freedom
- Questrade

All have its pros and cons. Some offer higher margins than others, they have differing minimum account openings (Interactive Brokers is $10,000 USD), and most have negligible customer service – as has been reported to me.

The significance of a dealer being registered with IIROC is that gets them automatic membership with the CIPF which insures trader accounts to upwards of $1 million, for a variety of causes. Registration with the BCSC just allows those dealers to solicit and accept accounts from BC residents.

Nothing the BCSC does restricts a BC resident from opening a dealer account with anyone in the world. If you open an account with a dealer that will take you as a BC resident then it’s your risk, and you have to be aware of what those risks are.

What is most important is for a trader to know his/her trading profile. What tools does a trader need? What functionality in their trading does a trader need? Once a trader understands what their needs are, they will be in a better position to determine what dealer they open an account with.

Add your comments, I’d love to hear them. I’m always learning more about the needs of traders and the original post in December had 37 comments. I’ll revise this post and add additional thoughts as time goes on, but the dialogue with traders is most important.

I hope you’re all enjoying the Labour Day long weekend and that you’re able to squeeze in some away time before we’re hit with the sudden transition into a new, and busy time of the year.

I’m currently headed home from Dallas, Texas and in Phoenix on a layover right now – tired, but definitely none the worse for wear. I was in Dallas for Saturday night’s college football game between No. 20 BYU and No. 3 Oklahoma. It was a heck of a lot of fun and the BYU Cougars prevailed with an enormous upset.

And the best part is, when I was in Dallas I was able to meet with two great trading guys. The first many of you are familiar with – Steve Croft who is the author of the Mind of a Trader podcast. He’s doing wonderfully, and it was nice to sit down to have breakfast with him and catch-up. He has been taking some much needed family time, but did mention a possible return to producing some NEW episodes. When that happens, I’ll make sure I let everyone know.

Secondly, I met with Shaun from www.OneStepRemoved.com. Great guy, and he’s got some good initiatives going on the trade automation and software (notably Expert Advisor) programming side of things. I’m thankful that he accepted my lunch invitation out of the blue. I look forward to seeing how we can work together in the future.

So all and all, what a great way to ready for the transition to Fall!

I’ve become enamored with one word names, and I can’t seem to shake it.

Just like BusinessWeek (the magazine) is correctly referred to as a one-word entity (despite 99% of folks referring to it as Business Week), I prefer TradingMetro to Trading Metro, and MemberZone to Member Zone.

So in the midst of creating a company there are so many little things – many that matter, some that don’t, and some that are a waste of time.

I don’t know which category this fits in but everytime I think of something now I think of it as one word (including the in development MetroSource section of the website).

Just a quick thought as I sit here in the Phoenix airport.

It was a mild surprise to receive an email today saying that FXCM is pulling out of the British Columbia market.

FXCM Canada was never really fully vested in this market anyway – it was a BCSC registered, but not IIROC registered firm. Meaning it could take BC accounts, but not offer the individual account protection of CIPF. 

Over nine months ago, I authored one of the most popular posts directed at BC residents who wanted to open accounts with BCSC registered dealers. Unfortunately since then the already small list has been pared further. I will write an updated post to that in the coming weeks.

FXCM cites new regulations as the reason, which is true. The BCSC is making it further constricting for dealers in the FX space to solicit BC residents.

We regret to inform you that due to new regulations in British Columbia, FXCM Canada Limited (FXCM) has decided to cease doing business in Canada as of September 19, 2009. We do however have a solution that will allow you to continue trading on the same platform with your positions intact. Our dedicated team will be available around the clock to help you throughout this transition.

What is most damning about this is that it further pushes BC residents to the fringes of the industry. More traders are looking past the potential protection of CIPF to open an account with a dealer that provides the best trading experience for them.

With the departure of FXCM there are no longer any BCSC registered dealers who carry the wildly popular MetaTrader 4 platform.

The BCSC places the onus on dealers not to solicit BC residents. When it comes to National Futures Association (NFA) registered dealers the BCSC can work in collaboration to have its members comply, but when it comes to some of the more visible offshore FX dealers there is seemingly little the BCSC can do to stop them from taking BC accounts.

The bottomline is business is being pushed out of BC. Accounts are going elsewhere, and at the end of the day something unexpectedly negative will happen. What that is I don’t know.

What I do know is that FXCM lost me with its arrogance a little while ago. I was a fan, but not anymore. My recommendation to traders is to look for a dealer that is NOT FXCM.

FXCM suggests a move to MF GlobalFX. I know of a couple of traders who are happy with MF Global – but the Canadian operation has always been on a small scale. I just hopped by the website now and there isn’t anyone manning the live chat (granted it is 3 a.m. PT) – in an era where most major dealers will give you 24 hour all-around support. 7icypgr4dn

Trading Communities – these online, so called Web 2.0, social networking, blah, blah have been overdone. Severely.

So we – pretty late in the game – have created our own Trading Community where traders can interact – for what reason? The reason is because we have much more to offer than JUST the community, than JUST a place were people can interact with others.

There are already a few communities in the industry that have dominant positions and loyal followings (such as www.ForexFactory.com, www.FXStreet.com, www.Trade2win.com, www.EliteTrader.com). We don’t intend to fully re-invent the wheel or to be lumped together with everyone other wannabe “community” out there.

As TradingMetro continues to develop the only centralized marketplace for online traders, we’ll continue to partner with more and more solutions providers, which will in turn bring users to all these solutions together in one place to discuss specific aspects of how they’re doing.

I won’t get too long winded here about the virtues of what we’re doing – because I’m sure I’ll share little bits over time.

But you can see that our website features a new grey bar along the top.

There are some basic integrations we’ve done – for example if you have a Twitter account, you can integrate it in with your TradingMetro profile. You can also access your TradingMetro MemberZone through the same integrated area.

It’s all pretty slick, and will only get better with time. Create a free profile, take a look around, interact with others, and maybe you’ll win a trading solution from one of our partners in one of the regular draw we’ll be having starting in the near future.

It’s not a new blog, it’s one that I’ve kept for sometime now, but we now have a new home for it.

You can easily find it by typing in www.PipStopBlog.com or it can also be found at www.TradingMetro.com/PipStop.

The entire TradingMetro team is excited with our most recent developments over the weekend. I’ll elaborate more on that in the next post, but I just wanted to share a new look and a streamlined structure to all TradingMetro blogs.

We’ll add more little things moving forward, but for now, we’re happy, and I’m especially happy to the team, with particular kudos to Ray for our next evolution.

In short, if you are, are you interested in investing in TradingMetro? Send me a quick line if you are; I can always be reached at sam(at)tradingmetro.com. I’ll share more on my journey of building a company on the blog – as a theme – moving into the future.

It’s not an official announcement – I don’t want to jump the gun too much here – but I had a great conversation on Friday with former coach Pierre Charlebois and he expressed an interest in rejoining the Online Trading Rooms team.

Sunday night he stopped by Harold Fretheim’s room to the surprise of both host and participants and Harold termed it a smash hit. 

When things become official, we’ll let everyone know. In the meantime keep track of Pierre through the TradingMetro FX Weekly Report and his Disciplined Trader blog on FXstreet.