• FXCM has eliminated all margin level requirements for receiving positive rolls. A positive roll is interest earned on an open position when the trader has bought the higheryielding currency and holds it overnight — beginning at 5:00 p.m. ET. The new policy applies to all traders using No Dealing Desk execution through FXCM. Previously, margin levels needed to be set at 2 percent or higher to earn rollover interest. Now, regardless of the client’s margin level — which can be set as low as 0.5 percent on Mini or 100K accounts — interest payments will be added to those FXCM accounts with a positive roll.

  • BrokerTrainingSchool.com has introduced the first online program to train, license, and assist in the placement of investment representatives in May. Under current federal and state regulations, in order to be sponsored to take the NASD licensing examinations, a person must become an employee of an NASD-member firm and commit to time consuming study programs and travel. BTS.com provides comprehensive training to individuals seeking these licenses without having to quit their current jobs. They will receive training and support at their own pace on their home computer. BTS.com provides training for NASD series 6, 7, and 63. Other licensing training will be provided at a later date. Information about BTS.com's products and services can be found at www.brokertrainingschool.com.

  • Dow Jones & Company has introduced Dow Jones News Analytics, a secure, Web-based software application that enables hedge funds and banks to quickly and cost effectively build news-oriented quantitative models for algorithmic trading. The application, developed with RavenPack, an analytics consultancy, works with Dow Jones’s real-time feed and continuously updated 20-year news archive, and can both present results graphically on a screen and feed them into a firm’s automated trading systems. Dow Jones News Analytics leverages Dow Jones’s comprehensive news coverage from its 2,600 news staff and more than 130 news bureaus around the world. The complete line-up includes Dow Jones News & Archives for Algorithmic Applications, the text based real time feed and 20-year archive that work with Dow Jones News Analytics, and the recently launched Dow Jones Elementized News Feed. The new elementized feed delivers news in precise and discrete elements in XML-tagged fields, providing computer-readable news data for direct integration into trading, execution, and other models. Using RavenPack’s computational linguistics technology and embedded statistical tools, Dow Jones News Analytics can identify trends and correlations in news and sentiment for most asset classes or instruments. This data is graphically displayed and manipulated against streaming and historical price and volume data, enabling analysts and traders to design, develop, and deploy proprietary models for trading, arbitrage, and back-testing. RavenPack’s systems are also scaled to allow the real-time, tick-by tick analysis of large volumes of news in Dow Jones News Analytics.

  • Nirvana Systems, Inc. has released OmniTrader Professional. The new version is faster than prior versions, supporting up to 500 symbols in real time. The release includes integrated brokerage support for MB Trading and Interactive Brokers, plus new OmniPilot scripts that enable individuals to fully automate trading strategies with these brokers. For additional information, visit www.omnitrader.com/pro/news.

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