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US forex broker Forex Capital Markets, aka FXCM, kept its leader position on the US market by largest retail forex deposits in July 2016, despite posting the only monthly drop across all market participants, according to a report by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) published on Thursday. The broker handled more than $173.9 million in client assets in July, which represents a slight decline of 0.6% over the month and 7.6% from a year earlier.
Meanwhile, the market grew slightly by a monthly 0.9% in the July, but posted a 14.5% drop if compared to the same month a year earlier. The US regulator also published monthly client deposits data for all forex brokers in the US.
FXCM had an adjusted net capital of $52.89 million in July, or slightly lower by 0.6% from the preceding month. The amount exceeds by nearly $20.8 million the net capital requirement of $32.1 million.
More details about FXCM follow (as at 31 July2016):
The past couple of months have been quite dynamic for FXCM. The broker has been enhancing its offering, while being under the attack of US authorities.
In August, the CFTC announced it has, with a 19-month delay, charged FXCM with undercapitalization, failure to timely report its undercapitalization violation, and guaranteeing against customer losses at the time of the crisis with the Swiss franc (CHF) in early 2015. The broker admitted to the capital shortfall, but denied all other accusations. On the other hand, a US court dismissed all claims in a lawsuite against FXCM by an institutional investors related to the CHF crisis.
In the meantime, FXCM and lender Leucadia National Corporation signed a definitive agreement to amend the conditions of the credit the broker drew last year to resume operations after it was heavily affected by the CHF crisis.
All this has barely affected the broker’s operations. According to the latest data available, FXCM’s retail trading volume continued to grow month-on-month, reaching $281 billion in July, which is slightly up by 2% over the month, but down by an annual 11%. The broker is yet to publish relevant statistics for August. The next trading metrics report may show improvement in results, since at the end of July the broker launched a social trading service through the platform of German social trading mobile app Swipestox. In addition, in August FXCM became the first forex broker to launch live trading through TradingView, an online charting tools developer and social trading platform.
To showcase and further its good standing, the company has made several significant enhancements to its offering. Last month, it launched Grid Sight Index, a service on its in-house trading platform Trading Station that makes big-data insights available to retail traders. The broker also added to the platform Smart Margin Watcher, a new feature that informs users when their accounts went into margin warning, as well as a Weekend Simulation that replays actual market data at real or accelerated speed even when trading is closed on weekends. In addition, earlier in September it introduced a Forex Market Depth Indicator that allow traders to access insights into the liquidity providers pool of FXCM and to see how much volume is available at a given price.
FXCM offers both retail and wholesale trading services. Its offering consists of forex, contracts for difference (CFDs), and spread betting. The brokerage is a registered futures commission merchant (FCM) and a retail foreign exchange dealer (RFED) with the US CFTC. It has units registered and regulated with the relevant authorities in the US, the UK, Australia, and France.