As some of you already know we decided that at our Forex Magnates Summit in London we will be granting awards to top firms in their categories.
The main issues we are dealing with of course are – what categories will we be considering and how do we pick the winners. We decided to involve you, our readers, in our thinking and decision making process:
The problem is that in this market almost all awards are simply for sale. Without pointing fingers many firms were established with the sole purpose of making money from selling awards. Forex firms are in part to blame as they are so hungry to be differentiated from others that they are willing to pay quite substantial amounts to be given any type of award, from any organization. The issue is so prevalent that at one point we were considering releasing an article titled ‘Awards for Sale’ naming some of the firms and brokers involved. Due to various reasons this article has been put on hold.
The award providers are using elaborate schemes to make sure they are not directly paid for awards (trying to avoid being named as award sellers) ranging from awarding the broker with the largest spend with them (on advertising for instance) or requiring brokers to pay fees for using their awards after being granted the award! Whatever it is called and however it is transacted – it is still Awards for Sale outright.
With this in mind at first we pondered giving awards based on quantitative rather than qualitative parameters. For instance providing ‘World’s Largest Forex Broker’ award based on volume or deposit which is objective parameter, and not the ‘Best Forex Broker’ which is a subjective one. We thought this would minimize bias and credit brokers/tech firms based on performance, however we immediately received a lot of rejects. It seems whatever option you choose – you will always appear biased to people unhappy with the selected quantitative criterion. This was the case for instance with selecting the ‘Largest Binary Options Provider’ – we thought to award the winner based on total deposits from their labels, which would indicate the preferred platform, but smaller providers were fuming as they thought this criterion was picked in order to rule them out of contending for the award – basically this achieved the opposite of what we had hoped.
At one point following all this we thought to completely cancel the awards but we thought it would be unfair – some brokers and tech firms do deserve to be awarded for their achievements even if this puts Forex Magnates under undeserved fire.
Hence the final decision: we are cancelling the quantitative criteria and are appointing a panel of 10 independent, anonymous (to avoid bias and payoff) judges who will vote based on their preference. It’s not the best method but it’s a one that seems to the most popular in the world (considering all other industries) and the one leveling the field for all firms – big and small alike. In the coming days the judges will be appointed and notified of the categories and the awards will be announced on November 14th at our Summit.
We know that even this won’t satisfy some market participants who will always find a reason to blame others for bias, however this is the decision we feel comfortable with and we believe it’s fair towards everyone in the market.
At this point we are contemplating what categories we should choose and afterwards we’ll nominate the contenders (it’s open to everyone as long as they fit the category). Categories can be anything for instance: ’Best Forex Broker’, ‘Most Innovative Forex Broker’, ‘Best Execution’, ‘Best Client Support’, ‘Best Binary Options Broker’, ‘Best Binary Options Software Provider’, etc.
In any case, the Awards are free to use by nominees and winners bearing no cost and restrictions.
We would welcome any feedback, especially what categories (and firms – brokers, tech firms) you think we should consider, simply email us at awards@forexmagnates.com
Some of the categories we are thinking of are listed below. Decision on 9 categories (10th is the startups award selected at the Summit) will be taken in few days and we will start taking applications from firms and let judges make their decisions.
- Best dealing desk broker
- Best no dealing desk broker
- Best Japanese broker
- Best broker research
- Best independent research
- Best platform
- Best charts
- Best app
- Best EA
- Best customer service
- Best Broker
- Best Bridge
- Best Affiliate Program
- Best Broker Website
- Best Execution
- Best Spreads
- Best Liquidity Provider
- Best FX Platform
- Best Backend / Back office
- Best Binary Platform
- Best White label platform
- Best Copy / Mirror Trading platform
- Best Forex Portal
Are there 10 people with the required expertise to make an informed decision, who are actually really independet? I somehow doubt it. Since the jurors will remain anonymous, its also not possible to make up my own mind about it, and hence the gereral credibility of such an award.
How would 10 people be able to judge the quality of execution for dozens of firms, in any authoritative capacity? Its just not possible, i would leave those categories out.
But its no big deal. I’m not sure if there actually are people who care about finance awards except for the nominees themselfs. I find even the Euromoney awards, probably by and large the most prestigeous awards in the FX world, questionable. Even if their modus operandi is proabaly the most fair.