Author Bio

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:

1. 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.”
2. 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.

Author Bio

Today is Social Media Day. There are no fireworks. No parade. No band. Maybe a couple extra @’s and RT’s, but as I see it, Social Media Day is a pretty big accomplishment for the social community.

I kind of equate Social Media Day to Earth Day. Every day should be about taking care of our planet. Recycling, being as green as we can, conserving our precious resources, but it’s just not that way. Most people don’t think about the Earth with every bottle of water they throw away or every gas-guzzler they drive. So, Earth Day becomes the event or reminder that it’s important.

Seeing as we are a Forex trading social network, every day here at Currensee is social media day. We spend much of our time talking with our fans on Facebook, retweeting our followers on Twitter, discussing hot topics with the members of our social network and participating in discussions on Linked In. The good news is that it’s ingrained in what we do. We don’t need a special day to remind us. It’s just how we do things around here.

So I ask you, on this Social Media Day, what are you doing to be social? How are you building your social network or your social brand? Would love to hear from you.

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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.

Author Bio

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.

Author Bio

All that glitters is not gold.  Although gold has been pretty glittery against the dollar lately, there’s been some interesting discussion on Currensee about the Australian Dollar, too.  It started with Craig noting that the AUD looks strong against the US Dollar and asking for comments.

Barak jumped in with some good technical notes on the overnight interest rate and observed that “0.9000 is a psychological level as well as a technical resistance level” which made me check the Community Historical Volatility widget…

…that shows us some entry and support points on the AUD/USD pair based on the Currensee community’s actions, which we can also see in the Market Watch:

Which shows that the community is split 50/50 long and short on the AUD/USD pair, but there’s more volume long and at least for the moment, the short money is winning.

Log in to Currensee to add your thoughts to the discussion and check the social indicators.

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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.

Author Bio

We spend a lot of time here at Currensee explaining what we do to other people. Traders, analysts, bloggers, journalists – all somewhat normal people with a common interest in Forex. When we describe Currensee, we talk about being a Forex trading social network. When you say “social network,” it’s hard not to mention the usual suspects like Facebook and Twitter (there I go again). That’s why I find it fascinating that there aren’t any other Forex-specific social networks out there and, believe me, I’ve looked.

Perhaps they are masked as forums like Forex Factory and the many other gathering places for Forex traders to converse. Or maybe they are happening in slices of general-purpose social networks, like the StockTweets Forex stream or certain Forex Facebook pages. But, as an avid social networker, when I look at the forums and online chatrooms, I don’t see a social network. I see a place where people create avatars and usernames and talk at each other, for the most part. The challenge is that you often don’t really know who FXPrincess or N00b2Forex are, the conversation is often very one-way and it’s not helping me grow my network of real Forex people. This brings me back to my question.

If chat rooms, message boards, and forums appear to be relics of the early web, why hasn’t Forex evolved with the rise of social media and social networks? If you’re out there, Forex social networks, please raise your hands.

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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.

Author Bio

Today in Currensee’s community, there’s a good discussion on the USD/JPY.  Marcie wrote that she may have gotten in at the wrong time and asked the community what to do.  So far over 60% say “get out now, it’s only going to get worse” but the discussion is still going.  Read the whole thread and vote in the poll at Currensee.com

As of this morning, 68% of the Currensee Forex community was long in this pair and losing.  I wonder if that’s the same group telling Marcie to get out now?  Will made an observation about Support and Resistance points.  The community volatility widget shows support points a bit below the current USD/JPY price so maybe there’s still hope for the long side.  Only time will tell.

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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.

Author Bio

Well, the Currensee Community continues to grow. Even though we’re still in beta, about 500 traders have joined our community and are sharing more than 100MM in trades monthly! As we’re gearing up for our launch in October, we’re busy rolling out new features to make your Currensee experience even better.

Linking Multiple Broker Accounts

Many of you have told us that you want to link multiple accounts so you can see a full picture of your trades and positions on Currensee. We listened and, in this release, you can now link multiple accounts easily from your Profile in the Accounts section. We’re now also supporting many new additional brokers such as Admiral Markets, FxPro, IKON, Start Forex and TadawulFX. Click here to see a full list of fully supported brokers.

Market Watch Widget

We’ve heard that you love the Market Watch Widget, but that it’s a bit difficult to understand. We’ve improved this social indicator widget to make it more visually representative of what’s going on in the community right now. You’ll see the Community long/short status bar next to each pair moves to represent the ratio of those who are long and short, and the color shows the win/loss status. Check it out, we think you’ll like it!

Community page

You’ll notice we changed the Community Page, too. As our community of traders has grown, we’ve found that it can take a long time for the whole list to load. Now you’ll see a clearer and more concise view, showing the number of trades and size of each trader’s team. This will help you pick out new traders to connect with and grow your own teams.

Feedback Widget

Do you have feedback for us? We want to hear it. You’ll notice an new, orange icon in the bottom left-hand corner of the Currensee platform. Simply click on it from any page and share your site feedback with us. Good, bad, or simply suggestions, we want to hear what you have to say.

That’s all for now. Please continue to tell us what you want to see in the Currensee community and we’ll keep you posted as we move toward launching this Fall.

Happy Trading!

The Currensee Team

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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.

Author Bio

Today, we released an exciting new version of the Currensee platform. We have two very important new features that will add significantly more dynamic content and also continued to make significant performance improvements to the Currensee platform.

New Economic Calendar by Econoday
First, we introduced our new economic calendar powered by Econoday, one of the world’s leading data and analysis providers. The new calendar contains rich supporting analysis and charts on many major events. The calendar also includes the ability to open real-time discussions and post ideas and comments about how these events will affect trading strategies.

Customizable RSS feature
Second, we added a customizable RSS feature to the platform. Our members told us they want to have one place to view the content they read each day to help them make their trading decisions. We say…ask and you shall receive. Want to see all the Twitter feeds on the EUR/USD, or the latest quotes on the S&P or the NASDAQ? In addition to a set of default feeds, members can simply add the feeds they want to their dashboard. We’re happy to feature RSS feeds from some of our own members, such as John Forman, noted Thomson Reuters analyst and Trading Essentials blogger, and Jerry Furst, FxStreet blogger, noted educator and founder of the Investors Education Network (IEN). We are also providing news content from CNN, Financial Times, Thomson Reuters and additional analysis and commentary from Mataf, FxStreet, Forex Factory and new partner, Traders Laboratory.

The Word is Spreading about Currensee – Thank You!
To those of you out there actively posting in forums and letting other traders know about what we’re doing, we can’t thank you enough. Your excitement around what we’re doing is catching-on. We are also starting to get our name out there this summer as we release an exciting video campaign, participate in the August Forex & Options Expo in Las Vegas (we’ll be in booth 302 – hope to see you there), and gear up for a fall launch.

Thanks for your time, energy and passion in helping us build the Currensee community.

Happy trading,

Dave

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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.

Author Bio

The Currensee team is heading to Vegas.

Since there’s no sight of summer here on the East Coast, we thought, why not head to the desert in early August and get a taste of that good, dry heat?

The best part is that we’ll be joining thousands of Forex traders and hundreds of forex businesses on the floor of Caesars Palace for the Money Show’s Forex & Options Expo. It’s their inaugural show, as they’ve added Options this year, and they are billing this year’s event as the way to “learn strategies to succeed in the two most-explosive trading markets of 2009.” Now that’s hot.

So, if you’re planning to come to the show, be sure to stop by and see us. We plan to unveil some nifty new features, offer live tours and even send you off with an entry to our sweepstakes (queue juicy prize music), that we’ll be announcing shortly. Can’t come to the show? We’re happy to set up your very own private tour in the privacy of your own home. Just get in touch and we’ll hook you up. And, be sure to stay-tuned for the sweepstakes details and your chance to win.

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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.

Author Bio

It seems we are encouraged at a young age to share. I am constantly telling my 2.5 year old to “be a good sharer” and “share with other people so they will share with you”. But, let’s face it. Sharing is just not natural. It’s learned and not everyone get’s on the sharing-means-caring bus.

I’m a good sharer. I love to share food – put a bunch of different plates in front of me and I’m in heaven. I always share my last piece of gum and I will let you borrow my clothes as long as you promise to bring them back in the same shape you borrowed them in (yes, I know). But it wasn’t always like this. Back in the day, I was a horrible sharer. So bad that I wrote the word “PIE” on all of my things – Baby Alive, Malibu Barbi, Easy Bake Oven, Raggedy Anne – PIE, baby. Why PIE? Who the hell knows. Pie is yummie, I guess. So, if it said PIE, it was mine. My sister remembers this phase fondly and didn’t give a crap about PIE and tried to use my stuff anyway. It wasn’t a pleasant stage. Well, luckily the PIE-phase passed (though my mom still has the dolls with PIE written across their foreheads) and I am the sharer I am. How did that happen? What changed? I am sure there are a bunch of you behavioral psych folks out there who can tell me why it changed, so come on and let us in on the secret.

For the rest of us, let’s fast forward to the here and now. So, along comes Web 2.0. The “social” era. What’s it all about….you betchya, sharing. Photos, profiles, music, friends, walls, lifestreams, hobbies, resumes, tweets, videos the list goes on. What makes some share and others adamant PIE-er? Here’s my $.02.

1. Privacy. This is probably the biggest reason. A fellow colleague (who will remain un-named) will not disclose a photo of himself to anyone but his immediate family. I completely cannot relate but it’s his right to keep it to himself. I often wonder – is it the worry of what could happen if said photo hits the net and is used to begin stalking him? Or is it something simpler – perhaps a discomfort with putting yourself out there. I’ve even heard of the suppressed “Catholic Guilt” theory. In any case, people have their own reasons and for that they get the PIE stamp.

2. Time. Many of the non-sharers I talk to say it’s a waste of time. Who has time to share photos or tell people what they had for lunch? Well, then, how do you explain the droves of people on Facebook and Twitter? They have time. Some of them, yes, too much time on their hands. Others, like me, juggle a million different things and social media is just a natural part of the day. Like checking my email or sending a text message or getting my latte. It is how I live.

3. Aversion to change. Can’t teach an old dog new tricks. This is true with the people out there who just can’t change. These are also the people who say they have nothing to say. Everyone has something to say. Come on, people! These are also the people who don’t see the value in sharing, they don’t care and they’ll argue till the death against it. To them I say, bleh.

4. Generation. Age definitely plays a factor. How many of our parents are on Facebook? or iLike? or Twitter? or FriendFeed? My guess is a very small percentage. My 60 year old uncle sees Facebook as a privacy disaster waiting to happen and a good way to start a high-school girl fight (he’s a high school teacher). My dad is still trying to figure out how to upload his photos to Snapfish and send me an email to tell me I can view them. Then I see some of my friends’ dad on Facebook and wonder, would I want my dad seeing me out on the town partying it up? Hm, not so much.

5. Lifestyle. There are people out there who just aren’t in the know. Yes, I know, dear reader, it’s hard to imagine. I have a friend from high school who just got email. Yes, I said email. It’s beyond me but some people just don’t have the lifestyle desire to get on the technology or the sharing bandwagon.

So, what does all this lead to. Well, if sharing is caring, what does what you share say about you? Are you a frequent Facebook status up-dater or are you more of a lurker who is present but not participating? If you’re a sharer, what’s the quality of what you share? People are fickle. They want to be engaged and entertained. When your posting, writing, uploading – think about the quality of your content and what it says about you. If you’re a sharer, take the quality of what you’re sharing to the next level. If you’re still in PIE-mode, come on now. Maybe you can take a baby step. Try out a social media site and see what it’s like to connect with a few new people or find out something new about someone you already know. Sharing makes you a contributor. The old way of learning was very one-dimensional. Now, I learn every day thanks to social media and people who share. New websites, products, ideas, personal updates – I have the ability to take it all in and decide how to use it. That makes me smarter and that makes me happy. Be smart. Be happy. Be social.

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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.