If you tried to access the site in the past 24 hours you probably experienced broken applications and intermittent downtime. We're extremely sorry for the problems! Reliability is one of the primary objectives at Forex Factory, and we fell way short here.

As for the cause, we were upgrading a load balancer and it set off an unbelievable string of problems for our internal network. The root cause was so obscure that it took our development team, along with several Rackspace engineers, working 20 hours straight to identify. It ended up being the longest non-hacker-related downtime we've experienced in over seven years. Sigh.

You can be sure we'll be working hard to improve our reliability in the future. We learned a lot from this experience and will use it to make us better.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Over the past few months you may have noticed the Forums undergoing an extensive interface redesign. This week we rolled out the last of the major upgrades.

There were hundreds of changes made, and together they result in a product that's simpler, faster to navigate, and more visually focused on content. Enhancements like the new thread pagination represent a breakthrough in navigation speed, and improvements like the new file uploading sequence, which turned a clunky 7-click process into a snappy 3-click process, make interfacing with the site much easier.





Another notable upgrade was the implementation of a new post editor, which will likely be celebrated by Chrome users since the old editor couldn't visually display BB code. And if you've ever found it difficult to browse a thread's attachments, you're going to like the new tabulated attachment display.





We hope you like the new design! Please contact us if you encounter any bugs or have feedback – we love to hear from you!

We've completed the rollout of Forex Factory's new front-end.



It's a lot more than a facelift! The new front-end utilizes the latest web technologies to load the site faster and make it more consistent across browsers and devices.

While the functionality of the site remains mostly unchanged, the design introduces a new "sticky" navigation that consistently keeps all FF products just one click away. The navigation also employs a wider layout to tap into muscle-memory, thereby reducing the amount of effort needed to get around the site.

Forget how the site used to look? Here's a screen capture right before the new front-end launched:



We've already received some great feedback – thank you very much! We're working hard to improve on issues that have been brought to our attention, and you can expect to see constant improvements in the coming weeks.

Thanks for helping to make 2012 another great year for Forex Factory! Best of luck in the new year!

Behold! Forex Factory has a new logo!



We stuck to our roots with a factory shape, but the new logo bears precision and meaningfulness that better represent Forex Factory's ideals and design approach.

The old logo served us well. It was a simple logo, proudly guarding over the site for almost nine years. In 2005, its shape was used as an icon to convey the expected market impact of calendar events
() – a pioneering feature that would later become ubiquitous in the financial world.

In 2011, the logo mark was again used to communicate market impact in an innovative way – this time signifying the actual impact of breaking news stories. Through the years, after serving millions upon millions of traders, our old logo became one of the most recognizable forex-related shapes in the world.



Goodbye ole' buddy!

The new logo is the first step in a larger design initiative. We're currently working on a new front-end for the site that will change the way you see FF. Here's a preview:



You won't have to worry about re-learning Forex Factory, as the new design will leave the site's functionality and layout virtually unchanged. The only difference will be that the site looks better, loads faster, and will be more compatible across devices.

And thus begins a new chapter in Forex Factory's evolution.

With over 3,000 Trade Explorers actively synchronizing with brokerage accounts, we can now develop some very insightful applications using the aggregate data. Our first such creation is an application called Positions. Located on the Trades page, under the Leaderboard, Positions gives unprecedented insight into how forex traders are currently positioned in the market.



Positions only includes live accounts (no demos), and goes far beyond the traditional long-short ratio. For example, it displays ratios in terms of both traders and lots, tells you which traders are long and how many lots they're carrying, shows you the lot-weighted average entry for all trades, and it displays historical ratios via interactive graph!



The aggregate numbers are made fully transparent by listing every trader that makes up the aggregate. For traders who have their Trade Explorers set to 'Public,' you can click through to their Explorer to see details about their position, and for those set to 'Private' or 'Buddies,' their positions are included in an anonymous format. Please note that traders who opt out of data aggregation (via Trade Explorer permissions) are not included in aggregate metrics or lists.



While there's a bit of a learning curve, once you master Positions it can be a powerful tool that improves your edge in the market. If you have an idea for making it more useful, or if you run into any bugs, please let us know!