Like Niche Players, Early Risers are relatively new to the Forex game. Typically these are companies that also rank lower on the maturity scale, but which tend to provide a greater range of services than Niche Players. They may not have a significant customer base yet however, they are positioned for long-term success through the depth of service they provide.

These companies are generally very well funded and, in a lot of cases, may be subsidiaries of larger, more substantial financial institutions. For example, national banks, which historically have had foreign currency exchange departments serving institutional customers, are beginning to dip their toes in retail Forex waters. Since national banks are not brokers or CTAs however, they are not subject to Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regulations.  They are governed by the regulations of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).

CitiFX Pro is an example of a national bank launching a retail Forex business. CitiPro's retail Forex business is a part of Citi Foreign Exchange, which is housed by the Fixed Income Division of Citi Markets & Banking. The legal entity for CitiPro's business is Citibank, NA.   The bank services a very broad range of institutional clients, including real money managers, hedge funds, corporations and other banks.  The CitiFX Pro platform now gives Citibank the ability to service the retail Forex space as well. They are rolling CitiFX Pro out globally as a retail Forex business.  A cursory review of their website reveals that CitiFX Pro is a potential Niche Player (or Maven, which I'll talk about tomorrow) offering trading, but little in the way of ancillary services.

An example of a more traditional Early Riser, providing trading, training, analysis, and other services to a retail client-base, might be TradeView FX. The company, founded in 2007 as a division of the Rosenthal Collins Group, is now a division of IKON Global Markets.  They are experiencing a meteoric rise in the Forex world due to smart marketing, excellent partner programs, and an experienced staff.  Still, TradeView is lower on the Level of Maturity scale, even though it is high on the Range of Services scale; placing it perfectly in the Early Riser sector of our DataInsight Market Profile.

Tomorrow, what is a Maven?

If you have been following along, remember that we're trying to illustrate that asking the question "Who is the best broker?" should be revised to "Who is the best broker for me?"   Read my previous post, DataInsight Broker Evaluation.

Within the DataInsight Market Profile, Niche Players are companies which rank lower on both the Level of Maturity and Range of Services scale. Typically, these companies are relatively new in the market serve a smaller customer base.

Instead of the next big company, there are a myriad of small companies with simple ideas that fill the Forex landscape. They don't try to be all things to all people but rather, they strive to do one thing extremely well.  Niche players aren't bad choices because they are young or small.  Sometimes these companies make a strategic decision to be a niche player to serve a different type of client - fill a different need.  Niche players may just be the right fit for you.

Think about this. Do you really need a company that provides trading, training, market and technical analysis, trading systems, trading signals, and managed accounts? It doesn't make a lot of sense to declare that Company A is a better broker than Company B simply because it is bigger, older, or more popular. Yet, there are dozens of Top Ten broker rankings that only consider the size of a company or the number of website visits they receive daily.

Let's say, for example, that Broker A is a niche player serving 1,000 clients with an average account size of $100,000. Broker B, on the other hand, is a full service company with 20,000 customers with an average account size of $5,000. You can see how these companies fill a different need and might appeal to a different type of trader.

Again, what we illustrate with our Market Profile Sectors is that Forex companies fit an identifiable profile and, once you determine which type of broker profile suits your needs, then you are more likely to find a broker that meets your personal requirements.  Bigger is not necessarily better.

Tomorrow, Early Risers.

The question I get the most from new traders is, "Who is the best broker?"  I've written about this before and the answer is still the same -- there is no way to tell who the best broker is.  The question traders should be asking is, "Who is the best broker for me?"  Everyone has a different trading style.  They trade different types of accounts for different amounts of money at different times of the day for different kinds of reasons and with different kinds of goals.  It makes more sense to try to find a broker that matches your trading style and requirements rather than getting someone's opinion on who they think the best broker is.  What does that question mean anyway, "Who is the best broker?"

We've developed a methodology that evaluates brokers and graphically places them in categories that identifies their characteristics.  The DataInsight broker evaluation methodology assesses each broker for the “Range of Services” they provide and the “Level of Maturity” they have achieved.  Range of Services measures a broker’s product and service offerings while  Level of Maturity measures their financial viability, customer loyalty, trustworthiness, and reputation.  Each broker is surveyed and their responses are recorded and quantified.




Based on the total value of the “Range of Services” and “Level of Maturity” scores they receive, each broker falls into a predefined market sector which, at a glance, highlights the type of company profile they fit and their relative position within that sector.  The data we collect to accomplish this covers sixty-two areas, including their products & services, trading operations, financial viability,  customer support, regulation, and customer profile.

I'll be talking about this in more detail over the next few days and, after I'm done, I hope it will become obvious that ranking brokers from 1 to 10 doesn't supply a satisfactory answer to the "who is the best broker" question.

Tomorrow, Niche Players.

I get emails every day about all aspects of Forex trading.  Even though ForexTurtle focuses on producing information about Forex companies, people still ask me about trading.  So, with the new release, we're adding a new feature where people can ask any kind of Forex-related question they want and we'll answer and publish them online.  We will select the best question each week and one of our experts will answer it.

Who are our experts?  Harry Senopoulos, the Chief Investment Officer at Personal Hedge Funds; Richard Stephens, the CEO of Horizon Capital Management Group; and of course, yours truly.

You can start sending your questions in now if you like to Ask-the-Expert@ForexTurtle.com.  Once the new release is online, you'll be able to submit your questions from the Ask The Expert page.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you a little bit about DataInsight and the information we're going to be making available via that project.

When I started thinking about creating ForexTurtle back in 2006 I began casually collecting information about companies in a Notepad file.  At first I just recorded their name and web address, but I soon realized that I often returned to the Notepad file to add some interesting tidbit I had discovered.  My efforts at note-keeping soon became an enormous mess and, it was at that point, I decided to structure the data I was capturing in XML.  I chose XML because it was more structured than my random Notepad notes and it was quick and easy to maintain.  After a few months of collecting data in a number of XML files, the design for a permanent database structure began to emerge.  Some thought about features, some data normalization and I was off to the races. That is how the ForexTurtle database evolved from a bunch of scattered notes to XML to SQL Server. 

While I continue to add Forex websites to our database, I also continue to create XML lists of interesting stuff that I find from time to time.  I call them Quick Lists and I have a ton of them.  At some point we'll probably add the content of some of these lists to our permanent database, but who knows when either the relevance or preponderance of data will make that beneficial? For now, we're just going to publish them in their current XML format.  

The new ForexTurtle website will have a section called "Quick Lists" (bet you didn't see that coming) which will include, not only lists we are developing, but lists submitted by some of our current members.  All of the lists include web addresses so you can easily link to any sites you find interesting. Anyone can submit additions or corrections to these lists and anyone can submit their own list for publication

Not to let the cat out of the bag, but some of the lists we're publishing with the new release are "Shari'ah Compliant Forex Brokers", "Brokers Who Offer FX Options Trading", "Forex Auto-traders", and "Forex Trading Contests".  We have so many lists that we're only going to publish ten at a time and we're going to rotate them every month. 

Next, I'll tell you about another feature we're adding with the new release - Ask Our Expert.