Packed with unique features and state-of-the-art technology, Interbank FX offers a completely different approach to FX trading. Drew Hillier spoke with Todd Crosland, Founder, Chairman and CEO, and discovered just how easy it is.

Interbank FX – a wholly-owned company – was founded in October 2001 by a group of experienced foreign exchange veterans in search of an alternative way of trading in the current forex market. Four years later, the system was up and running.

Naturally, this kind of operation needs to be extremely reliable and secure; but this holds no fears for Todd, who is particularly confident about the robust nature of the software and its underlying technology. “With thousands of orders a month going through the system it’s absolutely crucial that everything runs perfectly.” Despite being based in the US, Interbank FX is truly global. “We have customers in more than 120 countries, including our new Beijing office, ranging from small, individual investors to sophisticated money managers.”

The Interbank FX platform offers several distinctive features, including an Expert Advisor that allows customers to program their trading strategies into the platform, allowing them to trade automatically and receive prompts so that they can execute the trade based upon their strategies. The most crucial part of this tool is to show traders exactly on the charts where their trades would have been executed – for example, when two moving average lines cross. Customers can also check their profit-potential by back-testing trading strategies, and view multiple charts simultaneously.

Another key feature is the Automated Trailing Stop. This, essentially, consists of a complex stop-loss order in which the stop-loss price is adjusted by a fixed number of pips below the market price, whereby the stop-loss amount will not adjust until the ticket is positive by the trailing stop-plus 1 pip. If the market price rises, the stop-loss price rises proportionately, whereas if the currency price falls, the stop-loss price does not change. Such a facility not only allows an investor to set a limit on the maximum possible loss without setting a limit on the maximum possible gain, it does so without the requirement of close attention being paid to the investment on an ongoing basis.

Interbank FX’s fully automated and transparent system provides a method whereby you can link the signals generated by your trading systems with your real account. It allows you to track and manage your open positions, place orders and stops at any given moment. Expert Advisors are used to automate the trading process and relieve the trader of the routine functions of continuous market monitoring. Many professional traders employ multiple trading systems enabling them to operate in diverse markets and under a variety of environments.

Another key feature of Interbank FX is its real-time news stream, provided free to customers (whereas other services normally charge a monthly fee), comprising major economic news releases and live feeds.

Interbank FX, LLC is a registered Futures Commission Merchant (FCM) – regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and is also a member of the NFA. As an FCM and NFA member, Interbank FX must comply with the strictest of accounting and control standards, which include weekly and monthly reporting requirements. In line with standard compliance requirements, Interbank FX must also submit to annual audits from an independent accounting firm.

However, as technology moves forward in a relentless drive of constant evolution, Todd Crosland points out how – far from resting on their laurels – additional features, such as powerpoint screenshots, are added in Interbank FX’s commitment to innovation, execution and development.

Todd is also keen to flag-up Interbank FX’s white label program: “We have a lot of brokers who do their clearing through us,” he says, “so that white labeling the whole product for them, as well as futures commission merchants and so forth allows them direct access to the spot currency trading market. The trading platform can be fully customised and bespoke with a firm’s logo and brand recognition, thereby presenting a highly cost-effective way to launch your trading operations.”

At the core of the Interbank FX platform, traders of every level are able to execute trades by way of a simple click of their computer mouse. This – aided by simple to understand and visually well-rendered screen graphics – “easy on the eye,” as Todd points out, “…makes for a system that is not only a great one for novice traders to just do buys and sells, it’s also very user-friendly as a tool for people to learn how to trade.

“We also like to introduce some serious fun into our operation,” says Todd. “Every month we run a trading contest with $6,000 dollars of prizes; we give out these prizes based on the highest return. The manual traders – the guys who just trade on a machine, versus the guys who just use automated trading programs. And in actual fact, the manual traders usually come out on top!”

This revolutionary approach to foreign exchange trading provides Interbank FX’s customers with a straight-forward hook-up to direct execution off a streaming quote feed, effectively at the same price as traded by banks.

Through its partnership with registered FCMs, it facilitates access to real Interbank FX liquidity from 100,000 to 10,000,000 of the base-currency at the click of a mouse. Larger transactions are handled directly with one of Interbank FX’s professional traders.

So where does the future lie for on-line trading platforms? Todd Crosland does not hesitate in his optimism: “I think it’s going to grow – there’s no doubt – the market’s wide open for it.”