Darwinex reloaded
Dear all,
Since launching the community forum, and particularly following the momentous GBP slide last week, the feature requests keep piling in the forum – THANK YOU for all the engagement!
The requests are all over the community site – so we thought it’d be better to disclose their scope and direction in a single post, than answer all comments piecemeal. Going forward, if you see any new requests that pertain to Darwinex reloaded, kindly let other readers about this post!
There’s going to be a VERY substantial overhaul of the entire Darwinex in the coming weeks and months. So much change, in fact, we’ve codenamed the project internally as “Darwinex re-loaded”.
This post outlines the core developments – hope plenty of your Father X-Mas feature request list makes the cut 🙂
What’s changing?
A LOT. Please find a list of what to expect in the next months.
The investor proposition. We will:
- Substantially reduce default VaR for DARWINs to either 5% or 10%
- Introduce the option to gear up on default VaR for those investors who really want higher returns
- Introduce a completely overhauled risk management engine that will incorporate the many lessons the markets have taught us in the last 12 months
- Introduce limit orders (TP & SL on DARWINs)
- Gradually add more features empowering traders and investors to use DARWINs in the same ways you’d expect from other asset classes
- Introduce fundamental changes to the portfolio concept – with many underlying improvements that will be the foundation of the asset class
The trader proposition
- New assets (CFDs & futures)
- New trading interfaces, including APIs & compatibility with other mainstream charting platforms than MT4
The Darwinex message
When creating the asset class, we’ve had to position ourselves issuing judgment on what we thought “investable”. Thus the investable attributes, the score, the skill levels, etc. Having said that, we’re approaching the point where non-neutrality is neither necessary nor productive. Therefore, Darwinex will genuinely become the DARWIN Exchange, which implies:
- The Levels will disappear
- The investable attributes will NOT disappear – but it’ll be down to individual users to value as they see fit
- Short of disclosing trader intellectual property, we will offer tools so users create their own assessment criteria – including their own personal score, if they wish to, etc.
The entire site. We’ve learnt valuable lessons from users and are changing the complete layout to make
- Everyone’s user experience more intuitive,
- Less intimidating for new users, and
- More sophisticated for sophisticated users!
The algos. We’ve put a lot of work due to finish in the coming months that includes
- All investable attributes to be calculated on a trade by trade basis (as opposed to end of day), which means
- A much improved risk management engine that will overcome many of the issues identified with SNB 2015, GBP Flash Crash 2016, etc.
- Instant upgrades to available information
- A new world of opportunity when it comes to trading support tools…
As you can see – there’s plenty of evolution on its way, and we look forward to feedback on all the above, and indeed any other topics you’d like us to touch upon.
When will this happen?
The releases will take place gradually, but all will be processed as soon as possible! Unfortunately, technology is capricious in delivering unknown unknowns, so we can’t commit to specific timelines yet.
Unfortunately, fundamental overhauls come at a “cost”: development resources are gradually shifting to “Darwinex reloaded” and we’re discontinuing work on the existing site – so… you won’t see material change to the interface in the next weeks, but please bear with us. It’s not that we’ve stopped working, we’re working on stuff that you can’t see yet.
One thing we promise is: it’s worth the wait!
Looking forward to see Darwinex reloaded.
Good luck to the development team!
Stay tuned – you’ll like it!
Futures trading is actually a great news. If you could add GC contrats from COMEX it would be just awesome. No more SpotGold with poor liquidity. But the real gold market!
Hi Pedro,
we’ll add the most liquid references first, but we may well offer “non-DARWIN” future accounts with a wide selection of references
Hi Darwinex,
As a trader I am interested to link my current account (FXCM, but Trading Station) with Darwinex. Are you looking to add up this platform in near future ? If yes, how long it will take ? Or should I better transfer it to my MT4 ?
Please let me know.
Best regards,
Artur
Hi Artur,
there is a large probability that we offer US FXCM users the option of listing DARWINs off their back of their FXCM accounts, including Trading Station users. If you’re in the US, this would be your best shot. If you’re outside the US, you may check out the option of trading with either MT4, CQQ compatible front-end platforms or via FIX API.
Hope that helps!
Can you give us an idea of which platforms are cqq front end compatible? For example, would NinjaTrader be included in that list??
Yes- Ninjatrader is one of the many platforms compatible with CQG. For more information, here’s their full list http://www.cqg.com/partners/api
Open letter to Darwinex
Hi Darwinex team, as your support know well, I’m one of the guys that have always making suggestions, and boring you, in last months… I will like to address you a few ideas:
a) Darwinex is the most honest and transparent partner I haver met in this industry so far.;
b) The idea is fantastic, and with great potential, for traders and investors in a legal and regulated way;
c) Darwinex as broker have made very interesting progress and is one of the best in market, taking in consideration costs and execution.
After saying that, yes is true, some aspects still need improvements, and I’m glad, Darwinex is open to improve and transmit it in a public way.
But please, only because of the “voice “ of a dozen, sometimes with only “Google knowledge”, and that real don’t know nothing about trading… you don’t need to change all and start again, that if you don’t take care can kill entirely the idea instead of improve it!
The only and principal “sin” of Darwinex is to be so democratic, for all traders, that is impossible in investing world. You have to define rules and have a “hard” filter to Darwins become available for investors, not for all “traders”, that is impossible because they inevitably will do foul thinks and you will be “responsible”.
in my opinion what is need:
1) Every one have the right to have a trade account, and evaluate their skills via Darwins, to improve, etc…
2) Only a few, the best ones, can be available as investable Darwins to investors, (my opinion less then 5% of that exists now a days…), this must be the principal role of Darwinex with the asset manager license.
3) Constant evaluation, in performance versus risk, in order to remove or promote Darwins to be available for investors.
4) Active promote that few Darwins to investors as the most secure investment possible, taking in consideration the high risk that is by himself trading Forex.
In my opinion, all this is important, and at this must be done, will “only” need to create some new rules, keep almost everything like it is, of course with some improves, (special to investable attributes, my suggestion), but thats all, simple and with clear goals in mind.
There will be always good traders and bad traders, unfortunately with a ratio of 2-3 / 100, someones of the 97-98 class, have cause you last problems, not your idea that is wrong ( still need improvements, thats all), there are investors with all type of appetite also, they need is to be correct inform about the risk they are taking.
All this is simple to give my opinion, please take time, think and think again, before do things that you will regret, make only the important changes and don’t kill by consecutive mistakes this great idea.
All the best,
OldSchool
Hi Moises,
many thanks for the encouragement, and noted regarding the words of caution.
For the time being all we can say is: rest assured that we’re in this for the long haul, that we do things because we think they’re the things we’d want to do as traders or investors – not because it’s what the most vocal community members are saying. As to the exact implementation & philosophy – there’s a number of things we need to both do & communicate better. We’ll get there – meanwhile it’s great to hear that many of you “get it”.
Best regards!
Really great to see Darwinex continuing to invest and advance the platform. I think what you have achieved with the platform is phenomenal, and excited to see the new innovation to come.
There are though some aspects from an Investor’s perspective that don’t always make sense when seeing some of the draw downs. Will the default VaR improvements for investors help the wide variations in draw downs between the Darwin and the underlying asset? For example with OPK the Darwin is down 30% in October, but the underlying is down only 0.77%, which doesn’t match May when the underlying asset was down 1.01% and the Darwin was down -6.12%?
Hi Lance
The market conditions in October have taught us a number of lessons that we’re already incorporating into Darwinex re-loaded. The core issues affecting OPK have been:
– VaR of 20% is too high. We’ll lower the default VaR for all DARWINs going forward
– The trader lowering his standard leverage
– Abnormally high volatility on GBP crosses, with abnormally low EUR cross volatility
– Things we must improve in the risk management algorithms
So I agree, there are things with OPK and other DARWINs that must be improved.
Question about futures trading. Will they be real contracts on an exchange?
Yes, futures are only traded on exchange! Stay tuned, it’s getting closer and closer…
How about FX vanilla options?
I would like to trade that.
Hi Chris
Our current roadmap includes Delta1 products – e.g. spot forex, commodities, indices, futures and (perhaps, eventually) single stocks. Whilst we have the know-how to handle options (including FX Vanilla Options), they pose non-trivial challenges (risk management, liquidity) etc. which make other products more immediately addressable.
We may well offer trading only (e.g. non-DARWIN) accounts. In those cases obviously the above restrictions would not apply, however we wouldn’t be able to add as much value as we could add in the DARWIN universe. Hope that helps?
Any plans to offer AUD based accounts?
I alone can think of 200K worth of investment flowing in to Darwin when that happens.
I cant imagine how many aussies simply ignore darwin before AUD dominated accounts are not available. Must be in thousands, potentially costing tens of millions.
Hi Mikej,
Thanks for the note. You’re not first to request, and we’ll give this careful consideration.
Sorry that we’re a bit slower on the more “mundane” aspects of brokerage, unfortunately building the DARWIN universe takes a lot of our attention 🙁
No worries. Looking forward to it.
🙂