Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
US forex broker Forex Capital Markets, or FXCM, reported on Thursday both its preliminary retail and institutional trading volumes in May 2016 went down over the month by 2% to $280 billion and 33% to $50 billion, respectively. Volume from retail operations declined by 15% over the year, while that in the institutional segment was 67% higher than a year earlier.
In the retail segment, FXCM recorded an average daily trading volume of $12.7% in May, which represents a decline of a monthly 7% and an annual 20%. Active trading accounts slightly increased to 177,900 last month, which is 1% more than in April and 2% higher than in the same month in 2015. Tradable accounts, or those with enough funds in them to place a trade, also posted a slight monthly increase of 1% to 170,850 in May, which, however, represents an annual drop of 9%.
Meanwhile, the average institutional daily trading volume generated in May stood at $2.3 billion, or down 34% on the month and up 64% year-on-year.
In May, the daily average trades that FXCM handled were 550,310 from retail clients and 45,999 from institutional customers, or down by a monthly 6% and 14%, respectively. On an annual basis, retail trades were 6% higher and institutional ones posted a jump of 325%.
The broker said the monthly metrics no longer inclide the operations of FXCM Japan and FXCM Hong Kong, which it sold to its Japanese peer Rakuten Securities in 2015.
Gain Capital, FXCM’s main competitor, is yet to publish its monthly trading metrics for May.
Meanwhile, Exness, a forex brokerage regulated in Cyprus and Belize, reported last month a trading volume 5% higher on the month to $173.9 billion. Saxo Bank, a Danish bank specialized in providing online trading services, saw its trading volume going down 1.9% on the month to $255 billion in May.
Meanwhile, GMO Click Securities and FX Prime, both part of Japanese forex brokerage group GMO Click, also saw their trading volumes on decline. GMO Click Securities’ volume amounted to JPY 91.7 trillion in May, falling below JPY 100 trillion for the first time this year, and that of FX Prime was JPY 4.8 trillion, or 31.7% below the value reported a month earlier. The rest of the forex brokers are yet to publish their monthly metrics.
FXCM is a registered futures Commission Merchant (FCM) and Retail Foreign Exchange Dealer (RFED) with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). It has units registered and regulated with the relevant authorities in the US, the UK, Australia, and France.
The broker offers forex, contracts for difference (CFDs), and spread betting services. It offers 40 currency pairs on the Trading Station and MetaTrader 4 (MT4) trading platforms.
Source: FXCM
