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28 Sept 2007

FXCM’s Sentiment Aggressive Forex Managed Funds Up Over 25%

After a successful launch, FXCM's Sentiment Aggressive Managed Funds are up over 25% in its first two months since inception.

Clients had requested a more aggressive and highly leveraged version of FXCM's popular Sentiment Fund, so FXCM introduced its Sentiment Aggressive Fund in July of 2007.

These funds are divided into two strategic components, the first leverages FXCM's Speculative Sentiment Index (SSI) which gauges market sentiment to identify break out and trend trading opportunities. The second strategy is an approach that uses sophisticated technical strategies to harvest tops and bottoms in range bound markets.

This type of fund has found favor amongst many investors who are starting to recognize foreign exchange as an alternative asset class in any diversified portfolio.

In September 2006, FXCM held in excess of $215 million in customer funds out of a total of over $770 million held by Forex Dealer Members. While there are approximately 31 active Forex Dealer Members with liabilities to customers of approximately $795 million, FXCM holds approximately 1 out of every 3 dollars of customer funds held by Forex Dealer Members.

The company does warn however, that leveraged foreign exchange trading carries a high level of risk, and may not be suitable for all investors.

Hegde Fund Article Awards

It was announced today in a press release that Lehman Brothers' research on the classification of hedge fund investment styles is one of this year's Martello Award winners for best research article in alternative investments.

Lehman Brothers' research authors Arik Ben Dor, Lev Dynkin, and Anthony Gould showed that there are inconsistencies between the actual and self-proclaimed hedge fund styles. They won the award for Best Practitioner Article, for their article "Style Analysis and Classification of Hedge Funds."

Sharing the honor with Lehman's team for Best Practitioner Article were Ben Branch of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Taewon Yang of California State University, for their article "Merger Deal Structures and Investment Strategies." The authors found that the level of wealth protection for the target firm's shareholders is likely to improve both the performance of merger/risk arbitrage trading positions and the chance of merger completion.

In the category of Best Academic Article, IXIS Corporate & Investment Bank, a subsidiary of Natixis, took the top award. Florent Pochon and Jérôme Teïletche penned the award-winning article "A Conditional Approach to Hedge Fund Risk." The authors applied a two-step conditional Bayesian approach to hedge fund risk. This approach has several advantages given specific features of hedge funds returns, notably non-linear exposure to standard assets returns and short sample history.

David McCarthy, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Martello Investment Management L.P., congratulated the recipients, "This year's winners have produced exceptional research that will contribute to investors' understanding of investment strategies and portfolio return and risk characteristics. We wish them continued success."

The annual Martello Award is sponsored by Martello Investment Management L.P., a specialist fund of funds and advisory firm based in Massachusetts. It honors the best research articles published in Institutional Investor, Inc.'s The Journal of Alternative Investments. Winners were chosen by the Editorial Advisory Board of The Journal of Alternative Investments.