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April 2016’s US retail forex obligations statistics showed two interesting new trends – one is that the overall value across all brokers fell below $500 million for the first time, and the other is that Oanda Corp. outperformed Gain Capital and positioned itself as the second largest US forex broker by retail client assets. The data is based on data published on Monday by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
The retail forex market in the US seems to shrink, since the total client deposits continue to fall further by a double digit even after in the first three quarter the monthly values were below the lowest reported in 2015. The combined value of US forex brokers’ retail obligations stood at $493.2 million in April, which is 10.7% below the value posted the previous month and 12.3% down from a year earlier. This is the lowest recorded value since October 2010 when the CFTC started publishing such data.
In comparison, the highest total retail forex client assets that US brokers have handled in a single month was $982.3 million and was reported for August 2012. 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.
Forex Capital Markets, aka FXCM, kept its leading position as the top broker by client assets, but Gain Capital lost its long-time position as the second best by Oanda. The difference between the two brokers is not significant – Oanda’s client assets stood at nearly $127.3 million, while these of Gain Capital totaled nearly $126.1 million. After in March Oanda has shortened the distance to Gain Capital as its client deposits jumped by a monthly 37.5% after it acquired the US clients of IBFX, the broker’s client assets went down by a monthly 2.4% in April. Meanwhile, Gain Capital saw a monthly decline of 8.2% in April, which resulted in its moving down a place.
Forex broker | Total retail forex obligation Apr ‘16 | Total retail forex obligation Mar ‘16 | M/M change | Total retail forex obligation Apr ’15 | Y/Y change |
FOREX CAPITAL MARKETS LLC | $168,524,258 | $168,242,531 | +0.2% | $171,199,357 | -1.6% |
| GAIN CAPITAL GROUP LLC | $126,048,571 | $137,342,681 | -8.2% | $111,132,398 | +13.4% |
| IBFX INC | – | $171,675 | – | $47,433,040 | – |
| INTERACTIVE BROKERS LLC | $33,507,509 | $36,429,818 | -8.0% | $51,046,279 | -34.4% |
| MB TRADING FUTURES INC | – | – | – | $18,277,736 | – |
| OANDA CORPORATION | $127,263,901 | $130,363,278 | -2.4% | $117,921,523 | +7.8% |
| WEDBUSH SECURITIES INC | – | – | – | $44,069,431 | – |
| RJ OBRIEN ASSOCIATES LLC | – | – | – | $1,054,054 | – |
| TD AMERITRADE FUTURES & FOREX LLC | $37,895,336 | $38,164,158 | -0.7% | – | – |
TOTAL | $493,239,575 | $510,714,141 | -10.7% | $562,133,818 | -12.3% |
The CFTC said it deleted IBFX from the statistics. As a result, the number of brokers that had retail forex operations in the country went down to five in April. In comparison, a year earlier they totaled eight. For a second month in a row, CFTC’s statistics include data about TD AMERITRADE Futures & Forex, which obtained the last needed authorization documents in February this year.
Source: CFTC
