I attended the Scala LiftOff on Friday, in Reston VA. It was a great learning experience! There were some heavy hitters from the Scala community there, including the heaviest hitter: Martin Odersky.
According to Odersky, Microsoft is working on a Scala compiler for .NET. This compiler should be out before the end of the year(2009). This is very exciting news!
Why is this exciting (In a Forex trading context)?: It provides a simple way to integrate my desire to do Forex trading in Scala. I recently discovered an open source project called Open Forex Platform. These fellows have worked out a programmatic trading platform that is capable of interfacing with MT4 (among other things).
There are many details missing but this is very promising!