Introduction

Over the past five years, I have focused on B to B (business-to-business) activity in the FX automated trading industry. The motivation for this decision was to temporarily distance myself from services for individual investors (B to C) in order to concentrate on larger, more technically advanced projects and further refine my development capabilities. By collaborating with corporate clients, I could gain a deep understanding of market needs and technical challenges, and by developing solutions based on those insights, I believed I could push the industry’s overall technical standards forward.

This blog post shares, from my B to B experiences, the industry’s progress and the challenges I faced, along with how I responded to them. It also offers insights into how these experiences influenced my product development and what new challenges the automated trading software industry may face in the future. My aim is to share the knowledge and solutions I gained through personal challenges and industry-wide issues to help build a better future.

I hope this serves as an entry point for readers into understanding the industry’s current state and evolution and motivates further pursuit of deeper insights.

Industry Progress and Challenges

Key Industry Developments

In the past five years, the FX automated trading industry has undergone remarkable evolution. The introduction of new technologies has been particularly notable, with trading algorithms incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, transforming traditional trading methods. These technologies enable faster and more accurate analysis of market data and better trading decisions. Market expansion has also been significant, especially with increased FX trading in Asia. This growth drives diversification of the customer base and leads to product development tailored to different needs.

Intriguing Challenges

However, along with these advances, the industry faces several challenges. Among them, technical authentication issues have occurred frequently, and many traders encountered unexpected stoppages of EAs (Expert Advisors). This is especially evident on cloud-based platforms, where server communication disruptions can directly affect EA performance. Customer support also presents a major challenge. Many sales sites make it difficult to locate contact forms or respond slowly, which is due to the industry’s rapid growth and insufficient infrastructure, leading to decreased customer satisfaction.

To address these challenges, industry-wide improvements in authentication systems and strengthening customer support are required. Overcoming these issues could enable further technical advances and market expansion.

Personal Approaches and Solutions

Technical Responses to Authentication Issues

I personally did not directly handle the technical responses to authentication issues, but by receiving feedback from affected businesses and clients, I gained an understanding of the impact and general approaches to solving them. Generally, authentication failures are often caused by server misconfigurations, software bugs, or communication disruptions. To address such problems, it is effective to strengthen system monitoring and implement robust error-handling protocols with automatic reconnect and retry capabilities. Regular software updates and applying security patches can also minimize authentication-related issues.

Improvements in Customer Support

Customer support is a critical factor in customer satisfaction across any industry. From my observations, in particular,difficulty locating contact forms during emergenciesgreatly increases customer distrust and ultimatelydrives customer churn. To address this, I propose the following improvements:

Improve accessibility of contact forms:Enhance the website’s user interface to make contact forms intuitive to locate. For example, place clear links to “Support” or “Help” on the homepage and on each page.

Speed up customer responses:Strengthen training to improve the support team’s response times and establish a system to respond promptly to customer inquiries. Additionally, implement AI-powered chatbots to provide immediate responses to basic inquiries.

By implementing these measures, customer trust can be restored and customer satisfaction improved. Gaining customer trust is directly linked to business success, so investing in this area is crucial.

Commitment to Ethical Business Practices

Examples of Profit-First Mindset and Their Problems

In the automated trading industry, actions that prioritize profit can raise ethical concerns. For example, one company initially promised sincere responses to customers but actually developed logic that recommended high-risk trades, endangering customers. Such behavior not only betrays customer trust but can also undermine the market’s overall credibility. When profit pursuit takes precedence, short-term gains may come at the cost of long-term customer losses and loss of market trust, undermining a sustainable business model.

Proposals for Ethical Industry Practices

To address these issues, the industry as a whole must establish ethical business practices. Specifically, the following initiatives can be considered.

Enhance transparency:Companies should clearly explain to customers the development process of trading logic and risk management strategies, ensuring there are no hidden risks. This includes providing detailed explanations of the algorithms used and informing customers of risk assessment results in advance.

Prioritize customer benefits:Companies should cultivate a culture that places customer safety and利益 first. This is achieved by offering products tailored to customer needs and prioritizing customer satisfaction over profit pursuit. It is also important to actively incorporate customer feedback to improve services.

Thus, shifting toward practices that emphasize transparency and customer benefits is essential to earning customer trust. If the industry adopts these ethical attitudes, a healthier and more sustainable market environment may emerge.

Development of Unique Technology and Intellectual Property Protection

Beatrice NK01and its counterfeiting issues

Developing unique technology in the automated trading software industry offers a significant opportunity to provide innovative trading strategies to the market. My development, “Beatrice NK01,” is a frontier EA that uses a median-value trade strategy, and based in this field, it was pioneering. However, after releasing this EA, similar products rapidly emerged in the market. In particular, products using a name modeled after my pen name “Tokyo Cipher began to appear, which served as grounds for considering them counterfeit.Developers who publicly claimed they had no knowledge of median-value trading, released a similar product into the market right after my product’s release. This may have sufficiently aroused skepticism within the industry. Such situations can significantly damage the originality and market value of a product, and dealing with such products can further erode the credibility of the selling site, making recovery difficult.

In simple terms, it is this.

Think about the “fake” products you often see in stores. For example, suppose there is a popular pair of sports shoes. Because these shoes sell well, other companies start making shoes with similar designs. But these similar shoes are not genuine brands.

A similar thing happens in the automated trading software industry. After I released the special trading program “Beatrice NK01,” many similar products appeared on the market. These products imitate my nickname or otherwise try to look authentic, but they are not.

Selling such fakes damages the store’s credibility. Customers come to think, “This store may be selling counterfeit goods,” and even genuine good products may be viewed with suspicion. This is troublesome for both the store and those who create genuinely good products.

Ultimately, pursuing short-term profits of a few million yen can result in sacrificing the potential tens of millions of yen in long-term profits accumulated over years. Moreover, business partners who witnessed these actions begin to doubt, making future cooperation harder. They may pretend to avoid trouble outwardly, but inwardly think, “these people will act the same toward us.” This loss of trust makes business recovery even more difficult.

Strengthening intellectual property protection

To address this issue, I adopted a strategy of embedding difficult-to-analyze techniques into my products. Specifically, I added a pattern recognition feature to the algorithm so that direct imitation would be made difficult in terms of specifications and behavior. Additionally, I embedded hidden features in parts of the source code that only function under certain conditions to complicate attempts atreverse engineering by third parties.

Furthermore, I strengthened the management features of the software I developed and implemented a system to monitor that users are using the software through legitimate means. This helps deter illegal copying and distribution and preserves the product’s originality and its rightful market value.

These measures are important not only for my product but for protecting the industry’s intellectual property as a whole, creating an environment where developers can confidently bring innovative products to market. Intellectual property protection is essential to fostering creativity and innovation, and these strategies are expected to promote healthier competition.

Summary

Through this article, I have shared the insights I gained from five years of experience in the B to B market. The automated trading software industry has seen notable progress such as the introduction of new technologies and market expansion, yet it also faces many challenges. Authentication issues are frequent, and customer support has room for improvement, leaving many issues unresolved for industry maturity.

In my personal efforts, I have proposed concrete solutions to these challenges and emphasized the importance of ethical business practices and stronger intellectual property protection. These experiences contribute not only to industry-wide development but also provide concrete solutions for individual companies and developers facing problems.

Going forward, the industry will need further technological innovation and strategic responses to remain competitive in international markets. It is also important to remain responsive to customer needs and market trends. Stakeholders in the industry should focus on the following to achieve sustainable growth.

Continued technological innovation:Aim to develop more efficient and higher-precision trading systems through further integration of AI and machine learning technologies.

Enhanced communication with customers:Improve the quality of customer support and actively incorporate customer feedback to enhance products and services.

Advancement of ethical business practices:Operate in a way that prioritizes customer interests alongside profit.

With these efforts, the industry as a whole can develop further and establish a framework to effectively respond to new challenges.

Looking to the future, we must redouble our efforts toward these goals.

Evolution of automated trading and ethics - My efforts for the industry's future -