nnov.fxclub.org was the website of the Nizhny Novgorod branch of Forex Club, a company offering private individuals access to trading on the international currency market. The branch opened in Nizhny Novgorod on 15 November 2001: on that day a press conference was held, at which, as the home page reported, "representatives of the city media were present," with the official part conducted by V. A. Taran.[1] The site was a regional offshoot of the federal fxclub.org — a separate menu item read "Return to fxclub.org"[1]. The branch's contact phone number was the Nizhny Novgorod six-digit 313093[2]. The first snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated 2 June 2002, the last — 15 January 2010.

What the site looked like

The page opened with the heading "<<F X C L U B:::: Nizhny Novgorod Branch>>". In 2002 the menu consisted of four items: "Branch News," "About Us," "How to Find Us," and a return to the main site[1]. By February 2003 these were joined by "Branch Photographs" and "Weekly Economic Calendar"[2]. The content of the inner sections, including the address from "How to Find Us," is absent from the surviving snapshots — the web archive captured only the home page.

Most of the page was taken up by the branch's news feed; the earliest entry in it dates to 15 November 2001[1]. It was kept in detail: announcements of seminars with the date and start time, a notice about a change of phone numbers on 30 January 2003 ("number 313089 is no longer in service"), Christmas holidays from 25 December 2002 to 5 January 2003, the branch's anniversary on 15 November 2002[2]. On 21 January 2003 photographs of the branch appeared on the site "for the first time in open access," and on 22 January a "Current Week's Economic Calendar" section appeared, updated "every Monday early in the morning"[2]. Accumulated entries were moved to the old news archive.

By September 2003 the site was also distributing quotes: the surviving snapshot is a set of links to charts — "one-minute candlesticks for all currencies," hourly and daily ones, separately for the franc, euro, pound, and yen (CHF, EUR, GBP, JPY at one-minute, hourly, and daily scale)[3].

Seminars, the "Traders' School," and rating exams

The branch maintained its own dealing floor and used it as a classroom. On 26 January 2002 it hosted the seminar "The World Currency Market — Opportunities for Individual Investors," and on 18–20 April and 23–25 May 2002 the informational seminars "Currency Trading — a Real Earning Opportunity for Everyone"[1]. Some of the classes were taught by visiting lecturers: the January 2002 seminar and the seminar on 1 March 2002 about the introduction of euro cash — by O. M. Zeldin, vice-president of Forex Club[1]; on 29 June 2002, on Renko and Kagi charting in technical analysis — by V. I. Safin, a leading specialist of the company's central office in Moscow and instructor at the "Traders' School"; on 8 December 2002 a seminar on the Ichimoku indicator was led by E. Ponizovsky from Moscow[2]. In the winter of 2003 the seminar "The World Interbank Currency Market — Opportunities for Private Investors" was repeated three times: on 16–17 and 30 January, and on 3 and 17–18 February[2].

The regular form of training was the "Traders' School": groups were enrolled several times a year, classes began at 18:30, and sign-up was by phone[2]. Separately, "rating exams" were held, whose prize was a real trading account. Following the exam on 22 April 2002, the winners were given deposits of 1,000, 800, and 500 US dollars[1]. The fourteenth exam on 29 October 2002 was won by two residents of Nizhny Novgorod — first and third place, accounts of 1,000 and 500 dollars; at the sixteenth, on 1 December 2002, a participant from Nizhny Novgorod took second place and received an account of 800 dollars[2].

The branch had a local partner: on 1 March 2002 the site congratulated the Dealing Center at UNN (Lobachevsky University) on its fifth anniversary[1]. This means Nizhny Novgorod's currency-trading infrastructure had existed since at least 1997 — four years before the branch itself.

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site entered our sample from the nn.ru catalog's directory. It does not appear in the surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru counter, on which the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating is based, and no votes for it are recorded in our data; in the surviving results table of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day, the domain does not appear[4]. Nor was it a media project: the site did not compete for traffic with the city's portals, but served clients who had already arrived — with a schedule of seminars, a phone number, photographs of the trading floor, and quote charts[2][3].

How it closed

The site was never independent: the parent fxclub.org stood in the menu from the very first snapshot[1], and the Nizhny Novgorod address held only the local portion — the branch's news, photographs, and phone numbers. According to our web archive crawl, the home page of nnov.fxclub.org survives in 14 snapshots, the last dated 15 January 2010; in liveness checks the domain is listed as dead. What became of the branch itself as an office, the home page snapshots do not say. For its neighbors in this part of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet — see the general overview.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, February 2003 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, September 2003 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Voting results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, 2004 (archive)