It’s a lot more than a facelift! The new front-end utilizes the latest web technologies to load the site faster and make it more consistent across browsers and devices.

While the functionality of the site remains mostly unchanged, the design introduces a new “sticky” navigation that consistently keeps all FF products just one click away. The navigation also employs a wider layout to tap into muscle-memory, thereby reducing the amount of effort needed to get around the site.

Forget how the site used to look? Here’s a screen capture right before the new front-end launched:

We’ve already received some great feedback — thank you very much! We’re working hard to improve on issues that have been brought to our attention, and you can expect to see constant improvements in the coming weeks.

Like something? Something bothering you? Let us know in the comments or by contacting us. We carefully consider all feedback!

Thanks for helping to make 2012 another great year for Forex Factory! Best of luck in the new year!

Posted by Sidney, Forex Factory Director of Marketing

We stuck to our roots with a factory shape, but the new logo bears precision and meaningfulness that better represent Forex Factory’s ideals and design approach.

The old logo served us well. It was a simple logo, proudly guarding over the site for almost nine years. In 2005, its shape was used as an icon to convey the expected market impact of calendar events ( ) — a pioneering feature that would later become ubiquitous in the financial world.

In 2011, the logo mark was again used to communicate market impact in an innovative way — this time signifying the actual impact of breaking news stories. Through the years, after serving millions upon millions of traders, our old logo became one of the most recognizable forex-related shapes in the world.

Goodbye ole’ buddy!

The new logo is the first step in a larger design initiative. We’re currently working on a new front-end for the site that will change the way you see FF. Here’s a preview:

You won’t have to worry about re-learning Forex Factory, as the new design will leave the site’s functionality and layout virtually unchanged. The only difference will be that the site looks better, loads faster, and will be more compatible across devices.

And thus begins a new chapter in Forex Factory’s evolution.

Posted by Sidney, Forex Factory Director of Marketing

Positions only includes live accounts (no demos), and goes far beyond the traditional long-short ratio. For example, it displays ratios in terms of both traders and lots, tells you which traders are long and how many lots they’re carrying, shows you the lot-weighted average entry for all trades, and it displays historical ratios via interactive graph!

The aggregate numbers are made fully transparent by listing every trader that makes up the aggregate. For traders who have their Trade Explorers set to ‘Public,’ you can click through to their Explorer to see details about their position, and for those set to ‘Private’ or ‘Buddies,’ their positions are included in an anonymous format. Please note that traders who opt out of data aggregation (via Trade Explorer permissions) are not included in aggregate metrics or lists.

While there’s a bit of a learning curve, once you master Positions it can be a powerful tool that improves your edge in the market. If you have an idea for making it more useful, or if you run into any bugs, please let us know!

Posted by Scot, Forex Factory Senior Developer

We recently launched several new features that make the broker guide even better! Most notably, the spreads now update live! So not only are spreads real-time, but they now automatically update in sync with the brokers’ platforms.

For live spreads just check the ‘Live’ option in the top-right of the Spreads section, or use this permalink: http://www.forexfactory.com/brokers.php#spreads

When spreads are live, a green flash signals the spread became more favorable to the trader (tighter), and a red flash signals it became less favorable (wider).

Another cool improvement is that you can now pare down the list of brokers by where they’re headquartered, their regulator, or who they service. You can also select specific brokers for comparison purposes — it’s all part of the Flex Box settings.

We hope you like the new features! If you have any ideas for further improvement, please comment or contact us!

Posted by Sidney, Forex Factory Director of Marketing

While all information on the broker guide is kept fresh, the spreads are real-time! All spreads are pulled from each broker’s standard live account (no demos) with mere millisecond of lag (click the icon to refresh). With the built-in sorting feature, you can even sort the brokers by the pair that you trade most!

You can learn more about the administration and design of Brokers in the ‘About Brokers’ box. We hope this new product helps you find the broker that best suits your trading!

Posted by Sidney, Forex Factory Director of Marketing

To set up a custom start date, click ‘Options’ at the top-right of your Trade Explorer, and enter a date in the ‘Custom Start’ section, as shown below.

You may have also noticed that we recently changed the graph setup on the ‘Overview’ tab. Instead of one Flash-based graph, the Trade Explorer now has four image-based graphs on the main tab. This change gives you a thorough overview of the account with just a glance, plus it loads faster because it’s no longer based on Flash technology (which was our initial motivation for changing).

The new graphs also interact with the ‘Performance’ table rows — click the small blue icon on each row to make the graphs represent only that particular period. This is a handy way to zoom in on performance for the year, month, week, or day.

Haven’t tried the Trade Explorer yet? Get started here! Or if you have feedback or ideas for improvement, we’re always glad to hear from you.

Posted by Danny, Trade Explorer Product Manager

As shown above, news stories and calendar events are represented by the familiar factory-shaped impact icons at the bottom of the Market chart. Clicking the icons will bring you to the corresponding news story or calendar event for more detail. Impact icons can be turned on or off from the options below the chart, and only News impacts are turned on by default.

Give it a try and let us know what you think!

Posted by Michael, Forex Factory Product Developer

The data for Trades is aggregated from members sharing their Trade Explorer information (i.e., permissions set to ‘Public’), and the default settings only show activity from live brokerage accounts (i.e., no demos). Best of all, you can trust that the performance metrics are legitimate! The live/demo distinction cannot be faked on the Trade Explorer, and as we confirmed last month, all trade statistics are based on equity, so open positions are included in the metrics.

While the default settings only show live accounts, Trades is based on our Flex Box technology, so you can customize the content of the Trade Feed and Leaderboard applications.

There’s also a very useful filter on the Trade Feed. You can adjust the setting to show only your buddies’ trades, or only EUR/USD trades, for instance.

The default Leaderboard shows which traders are having the best month, and it can also be configured to display annual or weekly periods. To help keep the rankings pure, only Trade Explorers with equity greater than 100 currency units (dollars/euros/pounds/etc.) are included in the rankings, and commercial members are excluded.

So there you have it — a powerful new tool to assist you in your pursuit of profits!

Please comment or contact us to share your thoughts. We love to hear your feedback!

PS, If you don’t have a Trade Explorer yet, get one here!

Posted by Sidney, Forex Factory Director of Marketing

To open a charted trade, just click the chart icon () for any trade on the Trade List tab (see it in action). You can also option to show other trades on that instrument by checking ‘Show Surrounding Trades.’

Haven’t tried the Trade Explorer yet? Get started here! Or if you have feedback or ideas for improvement, we’re always glad to hear from you.

Posted by Danny, Trade Explorer Product Manager

As Product Manager for the Trade Explorer, I hear from members who are concerned that their Trade Explorer’s statistics are not as favorable as shown on other sites offering trade analytics. Most of the time the discrepancy is due to the trader carrying open losses in their account, which are only being accounted for on their Trade Explorer.

To illustrate this point, I opened a demo account and entered ten random trades. Then I closed the five trades that were winning and left the losing trades open. Here are a few metrics, for the same account, from Trade Explorer and Myfxbook:

Trade Explorer		Myfxbook
(more stats)		(more stats)

The account performance looks a lot better on Myfxbook because their statistics are based on balance, thereby ignoring the huge open loss. Since the Trade Explorer’s statistics are all based on equity, the open loss is reflected throughout all metrics, making the performance appear worse.

It’s not just these top-level statistics that are affected by the choice of equity or balance. Periodic metrics (e.g., How much did I make yesterday? How much did I make last February?) will change dramatically depending on how open trades are accounted for.

Out of the other eight sites we know of offering Forex performance analyzers, half of them are mostly balance-based, three are somewhat equity-based, and only one does a good job of reporting equity throughout. Since the Trade Explorer is one of the two analyzers that is completely equity-based, there’s a good chance your performance will, at times when you have an open loss, look worse on the Trade Explorer than elsewhere.

While this may keep some people from using the Trade Explorer, equity-based statistics are a must for professional traders. And professional traders are who the Trade Explorer was built for! We went to great lengths when developing the product to ensure that it was in line with financial industry standards, and that everything was based on equity.

Btw, we know balanced-based statistics do have their use. They can be helpful in performing what-if scenarios, for example. That’s why the Trade Explorer was built with an ‘Equity/Balance’ toggle that allows you to flip to balance-based statistics when needed.

If you have any questions or feedback, please send us some mail!

Posted by Danny, Trade Explorer Product Manager