Executive Interview: Max Lebedev, CEO, Forex4You
In this week's Forex Magnates Executive Interview, Max Lebedev, CEO of forex broker Forex4You discusses his company's business model and

During the last twenty years, the European fiscal landscape has changed beyond recognition. Whilst Western European economies remain in constant decline, are de-industrialized and hampered by the constant events surrounding the Eurozone financial crisis, some of the former Eastern Bloc nations have undergone a transformation which has led to the development of a stable economy.
Perhaps one of the best examples of this is Latvia, which has thus far staved off pressure from the European Union to join the troubled single-currency European Monetary Union, instead retaining its own sovereign unit, the Lats, and has leveraged its position as a significant trade hub between Germany, Russia and Scandinavia since the nation’s move from socialism to a free market economy.
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The FX industry certainly has a place in Latvia, a fair proportion of which is provided by the nation’s banks, however the country is also well positioned to provide retail FX to an ever growing Eastern European and Russian client base. Forex4You is one particular example, and could be considered a company of particular interest at the moment following the launch of its copy trading product in the light of the recent MetaQuotes debacle.
In this week’s Forex Magnates Executive Interview, Max Lebedev, CEO of Forex4You details his perspective on what he considers to be a successful entry into this particular market.
In order to introduce yourself, please outline your professional career and background prior to establishing Forex4You.
Appointing me as CEO of Forex4You was a logical step after my work as COO, due to many years’ experience in management and business development. In today’s forex market, only the companies providing high-tech IT solutions can claim for a major share of the market. I have enough experience and knowledge of how to use the best technology and structure the work of the company to achieve maximum efficiency and provide competitive products.
What set of events led to the establishment of Forex4You, and what did you intend to achieve during the initial stages of the company’s existence? How did you go about achieving these objectives?
The history of Forex4You began in May 2007, with the launch of classic and micro-accounts on the MetaTrader 4 platform. Initially, the project was focused on Russian and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) markets. At that time, the popularity and availability of online trading and Forex was only kicking into gear.

CEO, Forex4You
Just like any startup, the most important goal in the very first stage was to attract customers. So, in 2008, we launched a unique affiliate program, which is by far considered one of the most attractive in the market.
In the fiercely competitive world of retail forex, to be able to enter the market and gain significant share is not an easy task. How does the company vie for its share of the market and what type of client does Forex4You attract?
Forex4You was originally aimed at a broad audience of self-trading retail forex customers, from beginners and micro accounts, like “Cent NDD” to professional services, like “Pro STP” for advanced traders. Recently, more and more customers show their interest in PAMM investment services and Share4You – the trade copying service.
A wide range of services can satisfy the needs of each client, while constantly improving service quality and the focus on satisfying the end customers’ needs resulted in attracting a large number of loyal customers, which increases every day.
Retail forex has undergone a considerable change over the last year or so. Spreads are very low, and acquisition costs are high. What is Forex4You’s method of remaining profitable under these market conditions, whilst ensuring that clients are still provided with low spread?
Indeed, the global services in the foreign exchange market are changing at a rapid speed and severe competition makes it more attractive to the end user. Of course, to stay competitive, our company provides some of the best conditions in the market.
Unique offerings in the market, combined with high internal efficiency of Forex4You, enable us to provide high-level services for all our customers, and for this year it is over 73,000 clients.
Following on from that, what is the key to success under these conditions in the retail market? If spreads are low, and acquisition costs high, once IBs and affiliates are paid their revenue share/CPA, is this a viable business, or do business models have to adapt away from the IB/affiliate/revenue share model used by many retail brokers?
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The company in any market must constantly reevaluate the situation and change its strategy, if required. In the foreign exchange market, reaction rate must be much higher, so as not to lose the market share. Increased business activity indicates that the strategy and tactics chosen by Forex4You are highly effective.
From which region is most of your volume?
Forex4You traditionally holds a high position in the Russian and CIS markets, so the turnover in this region makes at least 60% of the total turnover. We also seek to expand our presence in Asia and emerging markets.
Recently Forex4You launched a copy trading product. If this falls under the category of financial advice from a regulatory point of view, what is Forex4You’s position on this, and if it becomes regulated as financial advice, how will Forex4You provide a solution to this?
There are not that many social trading and copy-trading products in this particular market and only a few popular products. Though Share4You was launched in late April 2013, the service has already found its audience and becomes more popular with every passing day, due to its ease of use and a wide selection of leaders, whose trades can be copied.
One of the main targets of Share4you is the most objective reflection of trader performance, but the ability to subscribe to receive signals from a particular leader is solely up to the client. The decision to recognize social trade as financial advice should be taken by regulatory authorities, but in my opinion, it should be a balanced decision involving all market participants.
In your opinion, what is the likelihood of social trading platforms and copy trading solutions looking toward open platforms to work with in future, given the recent block imposed on four of the market’s largest providers of signals and copy trading by MetaQuotes subsequent to allegations of hacking of MT4 protocols?
Illegal use of reverse engineering and derived products contradicts legal principles and ethical standards. The recent public case to which you refer has shown that such tactics is dangerous and may harm the business. We do not support illegal ways of obtaining and using information about IT products, including MetaTrader.
Traditionally, financial products on the retail market don’t often use open source solutions and platforms. I believe that the situation with social trading won’t change greatly. On the other hand, new platforms appear several times a year and only a few of them can claim a more or less significant market share. Our Share4you platform is based on highly available and reliable architecture, rather than on potential vulnerabilities of run-of-the-mill software products.
Does Forex4You concentrate on multiple account (PAMM) traders? If so, how does the company conduct marketing in order to attract them? Are they paid an IB commission for bringing their client accounts to Forex4You, as well as being entitled to charge a profit share /success fee to their clients?
Since the launch of the PAMM service on Forex4You, the demand for it is increasing. This can be explained by advanced technical implementation of the solution and impressive choice of professional traders. The profit share model makes PAMM managers directly involved and interested in a positive trading result.
Is Russia a focus for Forex4You, and if so, what are the volumes? It is a largely unsaturated market. Please elaborate on your opinion of operating on the Russian market.
The trade volume in Russia and CIS countries is increasing steadily. In May 2013, the monthly volume in this region increased by 27% and amounted to USD 16 billion. This is not surprising, as Forex4You becomes more popular and we have 6 years’ experience in this market.
Do you consider BVI registration to be sufficient, or will Forex4You apply for further regulation? If so, which jurisdiction is preferable to apply for a license?
Forex4You is operating under regulation of BVI FSC license. For those new markets that we will enter, we will comply with local legislation requirements and regulation standards.
Full and detailed research with relation to the FX industry in Latvia is available within the Forex Magnates Eastern Europe Country Reports, available from the Research section by clicking here.
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So does the CEO think it would be wise to launch an alternative retail trading platform in addition to mt4? Such as cTrader, Tradable, VertexFx, etc.
BTW, retail financial products have always had fairly easy API access so that traders can, in addition to the traditional retail offering, can plug in their own solutions easily. The days of having only 1 platform offering are over. Sophistication demands that you offer more than one platform to reach new and more varied audience (mobile, mac, etc of the SAME platform does not count).
Max, we had a client who attempted to sign up via forex4you.com website. They had a problem with verification where certain documents were displayed in russian, while the rest of the website and documents is in English. The live help was extremely rude and insisted that the client used the incorrect url link to sign up, even though we provided the link. A support ticket was filed, but no acknowledgement of the problem. It was almost as if the support representative went out of the way to deny that a technical problem exist. It seemed to be an “easy” workaround… Read more »
Jon, first of all, thank you reading the article, hope you find it interesting.
Having multi-platform offering, of course, creates more opportunities for any company, however Forex4you keeps the focus on MT4 so far. On the other side easy API, customization and integration of ready-made solutions is not exactly the same as completely open platform, which is by far more complex in every aspect eco-system.
Jon, the particular client situation above seems like a misunderstanding. To my knowledge the ticket in our system was created several hours ago before the post. In 2013 year 100% of tickets in our system have been replied within 48 hours, so initial reply should be expected soon or already arrived. In any case, the situation will be investigated.
You are right about open platform vs easy API/integration. The only platform i’ve seen that gives you the full source code with support is M4 (Modulus). I think if mt4 was more trader-oriented vs broker-oriented, the whole issue of easy api access would never come up because the api would have been there from the early days. But that’s a whole other argument. In regards to the client issue, we’ll have to see what happens. It is true that different cultures do handle things differently. Sometimes what is said and what is understood can be two different things. After seeing… Read more »
@Jon, every our customer is free to use most convenient communication channels, and all of them are being monitored for quality level. Naturally, livechat&phone are mostly suitable for “instant” questions.
NADEX and Cantor Exchange are exchanges dedicated specifically to binary options. CBOE is an exchange which provides many kinds of options, such as Index, Equity as well as binary options, whereas Cantor and NADEx is purely binary, and the market maker/exchange member must set up with either of those venues in order to provide binary options in the US. They would indeed be interesting, expect the cost is higher for a marker maker though because it is a different capitalization structure.
NADEX and Cantor Exchange are exchanges dedicated specifically to binary options. CBOE is an exchange which provides many kinds of options, such as Index, Equity as well as binary options, whereas Cantor and NADEx is purely binary, and the market maker/exchange member must set up with either of those venues in order to provide binary options in the US. They would indeed be interesting, expect the cost is higher for a marker maker though because it is a different capitalization structure.