It can sometimes be pretty lonely standing on our soapbox, waving the transparency flag and calling out passersby who get in Jack the FX Trader’s way (StockTwits, are you listening?). Then we heard about FXBees.com through a review on FX Magnates, and we’ll admit, we were curious. Whenever we hear the words “Forex” and “social network” in the same sentence, our ears perk up a bit (see photo of our Currensee Pips, upon hearing about FXBees.com).
Photo by Erik Veland
FXBees.com is fresh to the Forex social scene, so we’ll cut them some slack, but we do have our reservations:
Demo accounts. Demo traders and real traders are the ammonia and bleach of the FX world. In real collaborative trading, every player needs to have something at stake. Want to short the EUR/USD? Well put your money where your mouth is, whether it’s your annual bonus or your lunch money. Any tips or advice from a demo trader should be followed by the disclaimer, “Favorite pairs include Monopoly money and chocolate gold coins.”
Blind ignorance. Sounds like FXBees.com lets you scout out the pseudo-shining stars who may be trading in demo accounts and blindly follow them because you trade similar pairs, but you don’t know what their trading strategy is – Fibonacci, Nonfarm Payroll, or cloud formations?
Currensee members share their trading strategies, years of experience, favorite pairs and techniques so you know who you are “getting into a [trading] bed with,” so to speak. Bragging about your performance in pips by itself doesn’t tell a fellow trader much. That’s why Currensee measures individual member performance against the greater Currensee community and the S&P 500.
One of our feature, the Currensee Social Indicators widget, aggregates the Currensee community’s stance on all the major pairs, allowing members to see where our real Forex traders stand on the NZD/JPY. Whose advice are you going to take – thousands of Forex traders with real money on the table, or the guy “just playing around”?
You already know what we’re all about: real traders, real trades, real time. If we could figure out how to fit it onto a license plate, we’d have them made. In an earlier post, Michelle talked about why we’re having all the fun in this new, democratized Forex market. But with this freedom also comes great responsibility. In a world and a market that is stricken with scams and schemes, we strive everyday to be the voice of Jack (or Jill) the FX Trader who isn’t backed by the big-name banks and attorneys when things turn sour.
FX Magnates sums up the newcomers by saying, “Overall I would say FXBees has promise, but it needs to eliminate demo accounts, and it needs to stress the dangers of blindly following other traders.” We agree on both counts. That’s why Currensee is all about real trades from real traders.
We’re not trying to be harsh on the new kids on the block. In fact, in the spirit of collaboration and transparency, we welcome them to the Forex social media arena. We’ll be watching. Always watching.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
So it all started when some of our traders requested we provide an easy way for them to publish their trades directly to Twitter and also comply with the StockTwits’s format so their real trades could be published on both.
So being a responsible company, we’ve implemented the feature exactly how our traders requested it, and we now have a few hundred traders that automatically post their real trades directly from their real broker account into Twitter in real time.
Surprisingly enough, StockTwits has decided to block all the traders that post real trades from Currensee. These trades are flagged as spam, even though this can only be real people posting real trades directly from their real accounts. These traders are not even trying to advertise themselves, as there is not advertisement planted in the feed.
It seems that when the entire world is demanding more transparency from the financial world, StockTwits has decided to block the reality and engrave fake and fraudulent activities on their flag. FAIL.
So if you want to shake off the imaginary world of StockTwits and see what real trades do with real money you can follow our trades on Twitter.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
Are you looking to earn a quick buck? No need to trip over small children or fellow pip chasers, because all Currensee members are getting an extra 10 Bonus Bucks to spend in the Currensee Marketplace as part of our Bucksapalooza extravaganza. The Pips of Currensee are fans of free Bucks and tacky names, and thought there was no better way to kick off this [sticky] summer than to give back to the traders that give us a reason to come to work every day.
To the skeptics and party poopers, here’s the not-so-fine print you’re all waiting for:
You get 10 Bonus Bucks. Really, they’re free. You don’t owe us your firstborn, but we do enjoy homemade soufflés.
Spend your Bonus Bucks and other Bucks you’ve earned by participating on Currensee.com towards purchases in the Currensee Marketplace.
Your 10 Bonus Bucks and this offer will self-destruct on Wednesday, June 30, 2010. On Thursday you will wake up a refreshed individual minus those 10 Bonus Bucks if you haven’t spent them.
Why are we doing this? Well, the obvious answer is because we’re awesome. But the real reason is because we’re always riding our high-horse about real traders, real trades, real time, and it’s time to give back with real rewards. We’ve really pulled out all the stops so you can get your Buck’s worth. Choose from live trade planning webinars, daily newsletters from our Chief Market Analyst, a Thomson Reuters trading widget, and more. In fact, if you’re reading this your Currensee Bonus Bucks are waiting. Quit reading about it and go spend your free money!
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
Well we could have told you that, but we’re glad others are catching on. We just got word Lead411 has named us Boston’s fastest growing financial services companies. Our Forex trading social network was hand-selected based on its revenue growth, funding and website traffic. To toot our own horn a bit, Lead411 looked at 1,250+ companies and chose Currensee as the one to watch.
All the Pips here at Currensee World Headquarters in Boston are excited about the work we do every day, and thrilled to see others taking notice. It’s been a busy last few months – from announcing our Series B funding, to introducing the new features like Tweet My Trades™ and the Currensee Trader Leaderboard™ – and we still have more surprises and features up our sleeves. The thumbs-up from Lead411 is a huge pat on the back, and we’ll try to not let it go to our heads (we said try).
Want to be friends with the latest “hottest gig in town”? Like us, follow us, watch us and don’t miss a thing from the best thing since sliced bread first Forex trading social network.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
Some people learn by reading books, some by doing, and some by watching or listening. This Thursday, Currensee is presenting another opportunity to learn from a Forex pro by watching and listening to live trading. We’re thrilled to welcome Willie Guevara of YourTradingRoom and the 4XLosAngeles group on Thursday, May 13 at 8:30am New York time for a session called “Momentum Trading Live with Willie Guevara“ It’s $9.95 but there’s a hefty discount for blog readers on that link, and Currensee members can get in free – the link is posted in the community.
I met Willie not too long ago when I presented Currensee to his 4XLA group, and I can attest the he’s a good guy and a great presenter.. In this webinar he’ll show us his breakout strategy and illuminate ways in which the London session is different from the others. And as usual, all registrants will get an exclusive special deal on a YourTradingRoom product via the Currensee marketplace. We hope to see you there!
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
The greatest joy that a trader can experience is buying low and selling high. Selling at the highest valuation point possible before the security reverses would be the ultimate joy (in case of a long position). How often does this really happen though? Hmm, even professional traders would have a hard time claiming that they can do this often. More often than not the security is probably going to continue to move higher, but the desire to take profit (TP) on a trade forces the trader to close their position.
There is certainly no shame in taking profit on any trade. The key here is learning why the security continued to move higher and what impulse had you close your trade early.
Let’s move to the flip side. How often have you bought a security at a low valuation price and watched that security continue to slide lower? To some investors this is now a ‘long-term investment’ but for traders this is not a good trait to have as your trading balance may soon disappear.
Point being, do you take-profit on your trades too early and hold on to your losing trades too long? If so please note that you are far from alone, you are probably in a massive trading group that wants to excel yet just hasn’t’ done so.
I bring this up for two reasons. First on Currensee I was viewing the Community trading statistics, which can be found under the Profile section on Currensee. The ‘Win %’ for the entire Community is over 62%. That is exceptional; especially considering that the total closed trades is in excess of over 200k so we’re dealing with a significant sample size. Yet the accumulated returns are lagging and the ‘% days losing’ is at 64%. There appears to be quite a few impulses to TP on a trade and not let it run to its maximum potential. Given the increased volatility in today’s markets this is worth rectifying as soon as possible.
This Friday there is a trading webinar being presented by SpotEuro and Currensee that is open to both members (free) and non-members ($9.95) of Currensee at very affordable rates. Alex Kazmarck of SpotEuro will be discussing the price action that is taking place around the US Payroll report. He brings over 10 years of market analysis experience and one of his goals is to help develop novice traders. You can sign up here at half price.
Whether you trade the Euro, S&Ps or Gold all markets are intertwined in one way or another and if this webinar can help you understand the NFP price action then you may be one stop closer to maximizing your gains. Right now the consensus forecast for the US NFP is +177k which continues the overall trend of an improving labor market. Many uncertainties do remain for this report though. Initial jobless claims surged at the beginning of April and were 460k, 480k, 459k and 448k respectively for the month. Thus how certain will the markets be for a +177k figure? Usually the less certainty the more volatility.
Let’s not forget that Canada awaits its Employment report, Japan will also have just returned from their Golden Week and Australia, Germany and the UK will be looking forward to important economic releases as well.
These markets are moving; make the most of your trading. Maximize your winners and minimize your losers.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
This report is for your information only and does not constitute investment or business advice or an offer to buy or sell securities.
Some weeks everything seems to go your way. It’s true in Forex trading, and it’s true in building the first Forex trading social network. This week at Currensee towers, we’ve been ringing the bell big-time. On Tuesday, we announced our $8M B round of venture financing and the news got picked up all over the media, on Wednesday, our CEO Dave Lemont was on Bloomberg TV, on Thursday we had the biggest daily influx of members in our history, and today we held a webinar with Fox and CNBC guest analyst Bob Iaccino.
Check out our clip from Bloomberg TV’s InsideTrack show with Sara Eisen.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
Six months later – and six months is a long time in startup years – we’re back at it again, this time at the International Traders Expo in New York’s Times Square (the most Vegasy part of New York) We left the spokesmodels at home and spent the raffle money on rum & diet coke chocolate babka, but we got a lot more attention. People came to our booth already knowing about us or at least having heard about us.
I’m sure I’m missing somebody but here are shout-outs to some new and old friends we met up with: Jamie Coleman of FXLive, Maud Gilson from FXStreet, author Curtis Faith, David Kaplan from FXCM, Marilyn McDonald from IBFX, Betsy Waters from DBFX, Currensee member Brian Johnson from FXIntel, Elissa Fulop from Gain Capital, Ryan Sindelar from NinjaTrader, Currensee member Clair Wyant from IntegraFX, Todd Hanson from Live Trade Signals, Markus Heitkoetter from Rockwell Trading, and our new bestest drinking buddy, Matt Vann from MediaCougar. Don’t worry Matt, those pictures are totally not on our company intranet.
We gave away hundreds of Trade Leader superheros and talked up the Trade Leader program with novices and experts alike.
What seemed like a slightly wacky idea in Vegas – a social network for Forex traders? Traders willingly sharing information?? - was natural and normal in New York. And New York is a much more skeptical town. In fact, people with background in other asset classes seemed to be flocking to the Forex scene. As much as we’d like to, Currensee probably can’t take much credit for an uptick in interest in Forex, but we welcome it and we think we can help make Forex more welcoming to newcomers and more interesting for old-timers.
So where will Currensee be in another six months? I haven’t checked the tradeshow schedule, but I bet we’ll be in a lot more different places than we are today. There’s some good news I can’t talk about yet coming out next week, and lots of growing excitement about both the Forex trading social network and the Trade Leader program, too. Happy trading, everybody!
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
I have to say that I wish I was trading foreign exchange a bit more than I am at the moment. Actually make that a ton more than I am at the moment. These markets are moving and whether you or trading the AUD, CAD or the Yen we’re seeing enough significant moves to get traders excited and hopefully enjoying profitable trades.
One of the beauties of trading forex instead of say equities is that you shouldn’t be concerned on the direction of the moves either. If you are Long USDCAD this may not be hedging or offsetting other trades. In trading equities you may short the SPX but you are likely to be Long equities elsewhere in your portfolio. Liquidity, tight spreads and 24 hour market access are other good reasons to be involved in forex trading.
On Currensee you can see the positions of both the Community and your team members. My team members have over 100 positions on as I write. That is a nice tidy sum and many of those are with a bit of leverage of well. I’ll have a trade on as well the next time I receive a signal from my intra-day model but last week we missed some opportunities when my Expert Advisor failed to generate signals.
As we all know using Expert Advisors has become common place for individuals trading currency. If you can build a strategy and have your code written properly then you have a mighty convenient tool. It seems that we are all lacking time now-a-days and these EA’s seemingly allow you to do two things at once. Unfortunately for yours truly having that code written properly has become a stumbling block. We’re now reaching out to other experts and will hopefully have this rectified in the not too distant future.
Back to the trading environment, one look at the economic calendar, listed on the Research Dashboard on Currensee, shows a far less crowded calendar of events this week. A CGPI (PPI) figure out of Japan, US retail sales and GDP figures out of the Eurozone don’t exactly measure up to the direction that can be provided from NFP, ECB and G7 meetings. This should be viewed as a positive item for traders with winning strategies right now. There will be fewer speed-bumps to derail those trades that have been put on.
This should keep the focus on sovereign debt concerns, benign global interest rates and other hot items impacting markets right now. Following these items is easy enough using the Feeds widget on Currensee. This provides various top economic headlines from around the globe from multiple news organizations. Among the headlines that are Feeding as I write are stories on the Toyota recall, Chinese economic growth and Trichet’s visit to Sydney. More than a few items that traders may want to pay attention this week. Thus if you are looking for trader positioning, economic news releases or live news feeds the place to be is on Currensee.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
In response to demand of traders we’ve just implemented connectivity between Currensee and Twitter allowing traders to automatically Tweet their positions. The way the service works is that once you link your Twitter account you can chose which one of your brokers accounts you’d like to Tweet and we are automatically Tweeting on your behalf whenever you open or close a position. Since Currensee is the only platform that is connected in real time to more than 50 brokers the moment you execute the order we would Tweet on your behalf in real time. For those who are running business via Twitter we’ve also added the ability to Tweet only when positions are closed and thus attract customers.
One great service that can be along side with Currensee’s functionality is StockTwits and since we see the great value for our traders delivering the transparency we strive to into StockTwits we’ve implemented our Tweets using the same format that will be picked by StockTwits allowing traders for the first time to really Tweet what they do in their live accounts.
Currensee members who link their Twitter account are also going to be awarded 5 Currensee Bucks.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
Currensee is the first social network for forex traders. We bring Forex traders from around the world together to make trading decisions in real time using live trading data.
I met Willie not too long ago when I presented Currensee to his 4XLA group, and I can attest the he’s a good guy and a great presenter.. In this webinar he’ll show us his breakout strategy and illuminate ways in which the London session is different from the others. And as usual, all registrants will get an exclusive special deal on a YourTradingRoom product via the Currensee marketplace. 
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