YJFX!, the retail Forex broker owned by Yahoo Japan Corporation (TYO:4689), has notified its traders that the firm is terminating its social trading offering, called 'Trade Collector'. The change comes into effect on July 21, 2017.
The London Summit 2017 is coming, get involved! [gptAdvertisement] Trade Collector, a mix of Trading Platform and traditional card games, allows traders to do social trading based on selected strategies of live traders and adopts a card game style to lure novice traders to its platform. However, the unique concept wasn’t matured enough to attract customers desiring a more professional trading environment. All clients with an account at YJFX were able to use this service, making them 'card creators' (providing information about their trades exhibited via cards) or 'card players' (followers of the card creators).
In a post entitled “Information on termination of trade collector service” the company actually didn’t reveal the reasons behind its plans to abandon the offering, which was introduced in 2015 in the context of the mainstream adoption of social trading.
YJFX also didn’t say if the company is in search of a replacement to the social trading platform – but one thing is certain, many firms that have ventured into forex social trading in the past few years are putting their products under review.
Due to the change, all users of the service are advised to close all open positions by July 7, 2017. The transactions will be automatically closed by the broker at the specified date if not closed by clients.
YJFX designed Trade Collector to provide users with trade signals that the company creates and modifies after analyzing forex trading strategies and trading information provided by its live traders. YJFX believed that it could reduce trader anxiety about forex by offering trading know-how, but this after more than two years it did not prove to be effective.
YJFX is 100 percent owned by Yahoo Japan. The retail FX brokerage was started in 2003 and is part of the parent company’s financial and payment-related services. Yahoo Japan does not report results from the dealings of its FX brokerage subsidiary in detail.
The unit is part of the ‘Other Business’ segment of Yahoo Japan, which accounts for 8 percent of the revenue and 5 per cent of the net income of the parent firm. In 2015, the segment generated about $270 million in revenue (¥32.3 billion) with operating income amounting to $96.6 million (¥11.6 billion).
