Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
All forex brokers recovered in September from the low trading volumes they posted a month earlier, according to brokers’ latest monthly reports. The largest trading volume growth rate of 37.5% was reported by FX Prime, a unit of Japanese brokerage group GMO Click Holdings. Most reported a double-digit growth in volume, with the exception of US’ Gain Capital and Russia’s Alpari, which saw their trading volumes up by 8.3% and 5.3%, respectively.
The statistics is based on the latest reports of the key market players and does not include the metrics of UK and other forex brokers, including IG Group, Plus500, CMC Markets, Oanda, among others, since they do not publish such data. It also misses data about Saxo Bank, which has not yet published monthly trading metrics for September. In the preceding month, the Danish forex bank ranked third by largest trading volume.
Overall, all brokers kept their position by trading volume (excluding Saxo Bank for which no data was available). GMO Click Securities, also part of the GMO Click group, continues to head the ranking with a volume of JPY 90.4 trillion, or about $870.2 billion. Second in the lost is US giant Forex Capital Markets, or FXCM. Its trading volume went up by a monthly 20% to $324 billion in September.
On an annual basis, however, some brokers saw a significant drop in trading metrics. GMO Click Securitites and Gain Capital saw their trading volumes falling by an annual 31.1% and 40.3%, respectively. FXCM saw an insignificant increase of 0.6%, and FX Prime and Alpari posted an annual decrease of 5.9% and 4%, respectively.
Meanwhile, multi-regulated Exness saw its trading volume up by 10.6% on the month and 12.1% over the year, reaching $218 billion last month, or the third largest monthly value it has generated since its inception. The only higher monthly values were reported in July this year ($253.2 billion) and in June 2015 ($232 billion).
Following is more details about the monthly trading metrics of retail forex brokers for September 2016:
Retail forex trading volume | Retail forex accounts | |||||||
September 2016 | August 2016 | m/m change | y/y change | September 2016 | August 2016 | m/m change | y/y change | |
$870.2 bn | $752.7 bn | +15.6% | -31.1% | 456,103** | 452,222** | +0.9% | +9.3% | |
$324 bn | $270 bn | +20% | +0.6% | 177,818* | 175,757 * | +1% | –1% | |
$88.7 bn | $84.2 bn | +5.3% | -4% | – | – | – | ||
$218 bn | $197.1 bn | +10.6% | +12.1% | 39,643* | 39,095* | +1.4% | 0.3% | |
$207.8 bn | $191.9 bn | +8.3% | –40.3% | 133,009* | 135,634* | –1.9% | –11.2% | |
FX Prime | $91.5 bn | $66.4 bn | +37.5% | -5.9% | 168,494** | 168,316** | +0.1% | +2.7% |
Saxo Bank | – | $221 bn
| – | – | – | – | – | – |
*indicates active accounts
** indicates total OTC forex accounts
Meanwhile, some other brokers that offer forex, but specialize in stocks and futures as well, posted daily average revenue trades (DARTs), or the daily number of transactions that generate revenue, for last month, instead of trading volumes. They also reported a monthly DARTs increase in September, ranging from 5.4% to 13.7%. However, all but Interactive Brokers saw a drop of a about 20% from a year earlier. Interactive Brokers reported an annual decrease of just 2% in September.
Broker | DARTS | m/m change | y/y change | Total active accounts |
651,000 | +13% | -2% | 370,400 | |
251,188 | +8.7% | –19.9% | – | |
Monex Inc. | 147,917 | +5.4% | –19.58% | 1,009,346 |
TradeStation Group | 103,752 | +13.7% | –20.5% | 61,815 |
($=103.89 Japanese yen)
