Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
The trading volumes of all but one retail forex broker fell in May 2016 from the previous month, according to the their latest monthly trading metrics reports. Despite significant movement in volumes, the brokers kept their ranking positions from last month, and Saxo Bank, a Danish bank specialized in providing online trading services, has even strengthened its precedence over US-based Gain Capital.
The statistics is based on the latest reports of the key market players and does not include the metrics of UK forex brokers, including IG Group, Plus500, CMC Markets, Oanda, among others, since they do not publish such data. Japan’s Monex Group also provided no trading volume data, despite publishing such in the past.
Saxo Bank become in April the third largest forex broker by highest trading volume after it outperformed Gain Capital, so it‘s no surprise the broker is ahead of its US peer. What is more interesting is that last month Saxo Bank shortened the gap between it and US top broker Forex Capital Markets, or FXCM, while its lead over Gain Capital increased several times.
Gain Capital is also loosing position in the US forex market in terms of client deposits. For the first time, the broker was slightly outperformed by Oanda Corp., which took its place in April as the second largest US broker (after FXCM) by retail forex client assets, according to the latest data published by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
GMO Click Securities, part of Japanese brokerage group GMO Click Holdings, stays untouchable leader in the retail forex market in May, despite a 11.2% monthly drop and a trading volume of JPY 91.7 trillion, or about $862.6 billion. FXCM, which had last month a trading volume of $280 billion, continues to be second best by volume.
Some of the forex brokers saw their trading volumes drop by double digits, while for others the drop was not so big. Exness was the only one to post a slight monthly growth of 5% in May volume. The largest decline was registered by FX Prime,also part of GMO Click group, the volume of which fell by a monthly 31.7%. Over the year, Gain Capital’s trading volume posted the highest downward movement of 38.7%.
Retail forex accounts | Retail forex trading volume | |||||||
May 2016 | April 2016 | m/m change | y/y change | May 2016 | April 2016 | m/m change | y/y change | |
441,830 | 438,762 | +0.7% | – | $862.6 bn | $946.5 bn | -11.2% | – | |
177,900* | 176,812* | +1% | +2% | $280 bn | $287 bn | -2% | -15% | |
N/A | N/A | – | – | $255 bn | $260 bn | -1.9% | +16.4% | |
138,955* | 140,286* | -0.9%, | -5.9% | $223.4 bn | $255.8 bn | -12.7%. | -38.7% | |
23,056** | 25,967** | -11.2% | -31.6% | $173.9 bn | $165.6 bn | +5% | +21% | |
FX Prime | 169,543 | 168,938 | +0.4% | – | $45.2 bn (JPY 4.8 tn) | $64.1 bn (JPY7.0 tn) | -31.7% | – |
*indicates active accounts
** indicates new accounts
Meanwhile, some other brokers that offer forex, but specialize in stocks and futures as well, posted daily average revenue trades (DARTs), or the daily number of transactions that generate revenue, for last month, instead of trading volumes. All of them saw monthly drop in DARTs, ranging from 3% to 11%. US broker Interactive Brokers continues to top the list with 641,000 DARTs in May. It was the only one to post an annual increase of 4%, while the rest of its peers saw a drop of 1.3%-16%, compared to May 2015.
Broker | DARTS | m/m change | y/y change | Accounts |
641,000 | -3% | +4% | 352,600 | |
274,230 | -8.5% | -13.8% | N/A | |
Monex Inc. | 168,560 | –11% | -16% | 998,726** |
149,475 | -6.1% | -1.3% | 3,273,314* | |
TradeStation Group | 106,400 | –4.1% | -9.6% | 61,932** |
*= brokerage accounts
**= active accounts
($=106.3 Japanese yen)
