I have had the chance to chat with the Dave Lemont, CEO of Currensee, about recent developments and achievements, future plans and how their investment offering differs from the rest of the market.
Currensee is the first forex social network, and in recent months it has been focusing on its Trade Leaders Investment Program. The program allows people to invest in expert traders and follow their moves, the same as in mutual funds. This program is running since late October 2010, and you can join it here (affiliate link)
Investment, not automated trading
There are quite a few companies offering automated trading. Currensee has managed to position itself in its own niche: investment.
Lemont tells me that there is growing interest from money managers that wish to diversify their investment, and see the program as a way of investing in currencies, as an asset class.
Also regular investors, some are retail traders and some aren’t, are showing more and more interest. Currensee continues receiving more and more requests to join to the program, but remains very selective regarding the participants. The current participants are closely monitored.
Higher profitability for investors
The recent CFTC regulations require forex brokers in the US to publish their profitability rate. Most brokers have a rate of 20% to 30% of profitable traders. As the Trade Leaders program consists of selected successful traders, the profitability is much higher.
Lemont tells me that precise numbers will be published during the summer, but says that the picture is totally different. Will we see a positive profitability rate? This will be quite dramatic.
Improved spreads, new research tools
The company is currently working on new tools for investors, allowing serious research. One of them is an option to see what would have happened in your account if you would have allocated the funds differently
In the meantime, the company examines the execution rates by different brokers that work with the program. They check out the rates on a daily basis and occasionally send these reports to the brokers. In some cases, Currensee manages to get better spreads for the investors in the trade leaders program.
In the past four months, Currensee put a lot of effort into improving performance, especially with placing orders with brokers. In the first days of Currensee, I remember that performance was somewhat slow. Also here at Forex Crunch, I am making an ongoing effort to improve performance. Optimizing this can sometimes make a difference between a winning and a losing trade.
Expansion
Lemont says that more brokers are on the way to join the program. The program appeals to “clean” brokers – ones that really profit from the spreads and not from burning the client’s account.
Currensee is already available in 5 languages: English, Spanish, Italian, French and Chinese. Regarding China, there is a great effort to expand into China, as well as other Asian countries which are interested in forex. This is one of the main efforts now.
The real difference
Lemont wishes to emphasize the original difference between Currensee and other forex social networks: real accounts. Only people that connect and show their real accounts can participate in the social network and connect with other traders. In other places, anybody can say he has a winning system and can actually say anything.
I believe that Currensee has a genuinely great product and that is making a significant contribution in making forex an asset class. It has a long way to go, but it is proceeding nicely.
Full disclosure: I’m affiliated with Currensee.