Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
The combined client assets of retail forex brokers in the US amounted to $510.7 million in March 2016, posting a slight decline of 1.6% compared to a month earlier, according to data published on Wednesday by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Year-on-year, the figure represents a drop of 11.8%.
Client deposits include funds that would be obtained by combining all money, securities and property deposited by a retail forex customer into a retail forex account, adjusted for the realized and unrealized net profit or loss.
It seems brokers in the US have been having harsh start of the year, since even the highest monthly value in the first quarter of 2016 is below that of December 2015, when brokers had combined client deposits of $544.1 million, or their lowest for last year. After falling below $500 million in January, the total client deposits of US forex brokers moved back up in February to some $519 million, bouncing down to $510 million in March.
The regulator presented data about all six forex broker that had retail operations in the country in March. However, this time the statistics did not include Wedbush Securities, but had information about the performance of TD Ameritrade Futures & Forex.
Forex Capital Markets, aka FXCM, and Gain Capital continue to lead the ranking with the highest retail client fund values of $168.2 million and $137.3 million, respectively. However, Oanda has shortened the distance to Gain Capital after its client deposits jumped by 37.5% from the previous month to $130.4 million.
Meanwhile, IBFX regained its position as the forex broker with the lowest client funds after posting a drop of 99.6% over the month to $171,675, compared to $43.1 million in March. The company has been seeing harsh fluctuations in its client fund metrics, so there is no surprise here. What is interesting is that it is included in the CFTC’s report for March since as of the beginning of March IBFX terminated its forex broker operations and sold its US clients to peer Oanda.
Forex broker | Total retail forex obligation Mar ‘16 | Total retail forex obligation Feb ‘16 | M/M change | Total retail forex obligation Mar ’15 | Y/Y change |
FOREX CAPITAL MARKETS LLC | $168,242,531 | $176,554,674 | -4.7% | $176,920,821 | -4.9% |
GAIN CAPITAL GROUP LLC | $137,342,681
| $128,725,139 | +6.7% | $109,889,984 | +25% |
IBFX INC | $171,675
| $43,118,441 | -99.6% | $47,957,466 | -99.6% |
INTERACTIVE BROKERS LLC | $36,429,818 | $35,129,896 | +3.7% | $53,625,685 | -32.1% |
MB TRADING FUTURES INC | – | – | – | $19,218,689 | – |
OANDA CORPORATION | $130,363,278
| $94,818,495 | +37.5% | $117,921,523 | +10.6% |
WEDBUSH SECURITIES INC | – | $40,598,869 | – | $52,297,026 | – |
RJ OBRIEN ASSOCIATES LLC | – | – | – | $914,737 | – |
TD AMERITRADE FUTURES & FOREX LLC | $38,164,158 | – | – | – | – |
TOTAL | $510,714,141 | $518,945,514 | -1.6% | $578,745,931
| -11.8% |
The US retail forex market is among the leading ones worldwide. FXCM, the leader in the US, is also in the world’s second largest retail forex broker in terms of trading volume, outperformed only by Japanese peers GMO Click Securities. Gain Capital moved down to fourth place after Saxo Bank, Danish bank specialized in providing online trading services, outperformed it and got ranked third.
Source: CFTC