The GCI Advantage

Why trade with GCI? Our mission is to offer clients the best combination of advanced trading software, low costs and low margin requirements, efficient and secure back office fund administration, and a broad array of products with high profit potential. Advantages of opening a live account include:

Zero commissions. Client trading performance is enhanced by eliminating all commissions and fees.

Superior trading software. The GCI trading software provides real-time prices in all major currencies, market indices, shares, and commodities. Customers can choose from a Windows-based or Java-based version, and have access to mobile phone trading as well real-time charts and market news. Click here to download a free demo.

Product Offerings. In addition to Forex, GCI offers trading in indices, shares, and commodity CFDs.

Hedging Capability. Clients can open positions in the same instrument in opposite directions, without the positions offsetting and without using additional margin. Clients have complete control over whether they close or hedge their positions to reduce risk.

Rapid and fair trade execution. Market orders are confirmed within seconds at prices clicked on or accepted by the client. GCI also has a "zero slippage guarantee" for all Forex Stop and Entry Stop orders.

ow margin requirements. GCI provides access to Forex, share, and index trading with margin requirements of 0.5% on Forex, 1% on Share Indices, and 5% on individual shares.

Safety of Funds. Client funds are insured and maintained in separate accounts. Furthermore, GCI is regulated by the International Financial Services Commission (IFSC) for trading in financial and commodity-based derivatives and other securities, including foreign exchange. Please see funds for further details.

Client Service. GCI's professional staff is available 24 hours a day to answer questions and provide assistance. Our dealers can be accessed at all times via Live Chat, and our technical and administrative support is second to none.

Fast and Efficient Back Office. GCI prides itself on speed and efficiency of both opening new accounts and processing client withdrawals. Accounts can be funded via bank wire transfer, major credit card, or PayPal. We have also established multiple global fax numbers for our clients' convenience and have a staff dedicated to making administration of your account fast, efficient, and secure.

Risk is limited to deposited funds. GCI's sophisticated margin and dealing procedures mean that clients can never lose more than their funds on deposit.

Tools for successful trading. GCI clients benefit from a wide array of resources to improve their trading results, including market analysis and research, real-time charts, and free Forex trading signals.

Regulated broker. GCI is regulated by the International Financial Services Commission (IFSC). The IFSC's strict requirements include capital adequacy, reporting and record keeping, and proper disclosure and conduct with clients

Safety of Client Funds

Assuring client fund safety is one of the single most important factors in the financial industry. GCI Financial Ltd is regulated by the International Financial Services Commission (IFSC) for trading in financial and commodity-based derivatives and other securities, including foreign exchange. The IFSC's strict requirements include capital adequacy, reporting and record keeping, and proper disclosure and conduct with clients. Furthermore, GCI has years of experience managing risk, a strong balance sheet, and offers additional legal and structural guarantees:

Client funds held with GCI Financial Ltd ("GCI") are maintained in separate Customer Funds accounts and may never be utilized for operating expenses or for other purposes or commingled with GCI's operating capital.

Funds are withdrawn from these bank accounts only as a direct result of clients' trading activities or clients' request for withdrawal. In the unlikely event of GCI's bankruptcy, client funds are legally protected and returned directly to the customer.

Furthermore, GCI maintains a balance sheet with Net Capital in excess of minimum regulatory requirements.

Overview of GCI Financial

GCI Financial Ltd ("GCI") is a regulated securities and commodities trading firm, specializing in online Foreign Exchange ("Forex") brokerage. In addition to Forex, GCI is a primary market maker in Contracts for Difference ("CFDs") on shares, indices and futures, and offers one of the fastest growing online CFD trading services. GCI has over 10,000 clients worldwide, including individual traders, institutions, and money managers. GCI provides an advanced, secure, and comprehensive online trading system. Client funds are insured and held in a separate customer account. In addition, GCI Financial Ltd maintains Net Capital in excess of minimum regulatory requirements.

Recommend by Top Industry Participants

GCI is recommended by top industry participants and has had its market analysis featured in leading publications, including the Financial Times. Click here for a partial list of company websites that recommend GCI Financial Ltd.

GCI's analysis also appears regularly on Multex.com and Reuters, and is subscribed to by major institutions including J.P. Morgan, HSBC Asset Management, and Goldman Sachs. Click here for a partial list of articles and publications featuring GCI.

Regulation

GCI Financial Ltd is regulated by the International Financial Services Commission (IFSC) for trading in financial and commodity-based derivatives and other securities, including foreign exchange. The IFSC's strict requirements include capital adequacy, reporting and record keeping, and proper disclosure and conduct with clients.

The Money Game

Recently, I received a very interesting e-mail by Scott Moore, an artist from California. He sent me a picture of his latest painting called “The Money Game” which illustrates the current crisis and the bailouts and busts which took place. The image includes the key elements of the economic crisis in the United States. Just take a deeper look and you will, for example, recognize the cars representing the auto industry or you will see that the overall structure of the landscape is a chess field, which gives the painting its name.

If you like “The Money Game” by Scott Moore, you can purchase it on the artist’s website.
Also, please leave a comment to tell us what you think about the painting and how you see the current economic crisis!
The economy collapsed and Las Vegas fells it. This 25 minutes long documentation shows various examples what happens in Sin City. The reporter interviews and joins several people living in the city, amongst them police men who throw people out of their homes. Some people are forced to leave their homes even if they have the money, but rented the place and unfortunately the actual owner can’t pay his mortgage, resulting in having only 20 minutes to pack their stuff and get out. Another example of radical life changes are women once working at mortgage firms and now dancing as a strippers. The city and state is also suffering from budget cuts for hospitals, universities and so on.
I recommend watching the video if you have no first hand experiences to know what’s actually going on down there. People clearly made the mistakes to thing that the boom will last forever and that real estate is a good investment which will always raise in value making it pay for itself.
The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a book about randomness in life and economy, concentrating and explaining the Black Swan phenomenon. Basically the Black Swan is a highly improbable event with huge influence on it’s surroundings. Although not foreseeable, the book teaches the reader how to deal with randomness and gives valuable tips on how to live a life which is open to opportunity.
Throughout the first chapters of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable you get an introduction to randomness and Black Swans. The author describes various situations where randomness is a huge factor and unleashes some common mistakes in human thinking regarding this topic. Nassim Taleb explains why so called experts are wrong and why the future can not be predicted by looking at the past. Instead, the really important events are rare and unpredictable, he calls them Black Swans.
The book goes on until you can’t take it any longer and start to have the nagging question in your head: “Dear author, what the heck should I do then?” The answer is provided in the practical chapter with some simple rules to handle life better with the knowledge of random events and their effects.
The book ends with some chapters about formulas and theory. Although there is a technical part, this book is not at all technical. If you are not interested in formulas, just skip these chapters, the author himself recommends that.
All in all, the Black Swan highly influenced my thinking about randomness and I think you should read it, too.

The Great Depression

In the book “The Snowball” - a wonderful biography of Warren Buffett’s life and absolutely worth reading in my opinion - Warren Buffett summed up the actual situation of the world’s economy in the last chapter “Coupons” using the words: “It’s a hard time. This is now another world, and nobody knows what will happen to the world.”
But let’s take a look on what happened in the last months. After the fall of Lehman a big shock wave spread over the financial markets inexorably. In the course of that shock wave, the Dow Jones fell from its all-time high of 14,000 Points to 8,000 Points and bank titles such as Bank of America or Citygroup have lost 85% of their former market capitalisation. The former chairman of the NASDAQ Bernard Madoff was able to dupe his investors to the tune of $50,000,000,000. Several personalities of the financial world have committed suicide, including the German investor and multibillionaire Adolf Merckle.

What will happen now? Will we really face a crisis just like the crisis in 1929? First of all, I want to say that nobody can predict the future but the similarities to the year 1929 are really frightening. The crash of 1929 for example had it’s roots in much too high stock values caused by the wide range of credit offers banks offered the people in order to achieve larger profits. Four years after the crash the U.S. government passed a sequence of central economic planning programmes called “New Deal” in order to stabilize the economy and above all regulate the completely runaway stock market. The deal worked and as banks weren’t allowed to spread credits to everyone in order to fund huge financial bubbles, governments did’t have to deal with the consequences of such enormous financial bubbles for more than 75 years - until now. But in the year 2000 bankers had a new exciting idea on how to offer credits to the masses. Instead of giving direct credits to the people like in 1929 they now gave mortgages to nearly everybody. This had the effect of raising housing prices and when the price of your home is very high you are also more creditworthy. But of course this bubble also had to burst and now we are facing a huge credit-funded pile of fragments again. The story of Bernard Madoff has also already existed, albeit in a slightly weakened form: Richard Whitney, who was the chairman of the N.Y. stock exchange in 1929 was sentenced to 5 years prison in 1938 for embezzling millions of dollars from his clients between 1929-19