Effective October 18, 2010, the leverage offered to retail customers of U.S. foreign exchange dealers will be reduced to 50:1 for major currencies and 20:1 for all others. 

While these changes are intended to bring certainty to the regulatory environment, certainty is no substitute for the freedom to trade in the world's deepest market in the manner that most efficiently fits your trading strategies and goals.

What will this mean for U.S. traders? It means their trading power will be slashed if they trade the major currency pairs with a further reduction in the minors. It also means a lot more U.S. Forex traders will be moving their accounts offshore.

Effective October 18, 2010, the leverage offered to retail customers of U.S. foreign exchange dealers will be reduced to 50:1 for major currencies and 20:1 for all others.

What will this mean for U.S. traders? It means their trading power will be slashed if they trade the major currency pairs with a further reduction in the minors.

It also means a lot more U.S. Forex traders will be moving their accounts offshore.

Ternion Financial released its HAX (Heikin Ashi Cross)technical indicator today.  The HAX isbased on the Heikin Ashi algorithm and does a little more than a typicalindicator and a little less than an expert advisor. 

You can register to get a free copy of the HAX, completewith documentation, on Ternion’s website. 

FXDD announced today that it will be enabling fractional pip pricing for demo trading effective August 1, 2010 and for live trading effective August 15, 2010.  The move to fractional pip pricing is becoming more popular in recent months.  AC-Markets, FXCM, IBFX and others have already made the switch and retail traders are adjusting.  

For those of you who aren't quite sure what fractional pip pricing might mean to your trading, rest easy.  It simply means that prices will be quoted with an extra digit to the right of the decimal point.  So if you are used to seeing the EUR/USD as 1.2738 it might now be quoted as 1.27385.  Yen based currencies, which had previously been quoted with 2 decimal places are quoted with 3 in a fractional pip pricing system.  So the USD/JPY formerly quoted as 88.25 might now be quoted as 88.256.

The smallest price movement used to be the pip but in a fractional pip pricing system, the smallest price movement is now one tenth of a pip (or point).  This means that spreads can now be quoted in fractional pips also.  So, more competitive brokers who formerly quoted a 3 pip spread on a currency pair might now quote 2.8 to get a jump on their competition.  

When I switched from IBFX to AC-Markets it took me a little while to get used to fractional pip pricing.  Not only did the Market Watch window look different but I had to modify all my technical indicators and expert advisors to ensure that they ran on both a standard pip system and a fractional pip system.  Now that the changes have been made I am a lot happier with trading fractional pips.

Ternion Financial LLC, an Atlanta based currency trading firm, will begin a phased release its series of technical indicators this week.  The indicators serve as the core of Ternion's library of proprietary Metatrader 4 expert advisors.  The initial manuals and technical indicators will be available for download to the trading public on Friday, July 16th.  The first expert advisors will be released later this month.

For further information, go to Ternion's website at www.TernionFinancial.com.