Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
The amount of retail client deposits with US brokers stayed relatively unchanged at $518.6 million in September 2016, posting just a slight decrease of 0.2% from August when it hit the highest since the beginning of the year, according to the latest monthly report of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) published on Wednesday. The figure represents an annual drop of 8.7%, which is one of the lowest rates reported so far this year.
In 2015 the lowest monthly value of retail forex deposits was $544.1 million and was reported in December. So far this year, US brokers’ monthly forex deposits have been below that amount.
The US forex market has been experiencing a downfall in the recent months. In the past year a few brokers exited the market, mainly due to regulatory restrictions that seriously limit their operations in the country. Phillip Capital and IBFX both ceased operations in the US earlier in 2016 and the CFTC stopped adding data about Wedbush Securities as of March this year. For the same period in 2015, two other brokers were doing business in the country MB Trading Futures and RJ OBrien Associates. Meanwhile, Interactive Brokers, the one with the lowest amount of retail forex deposits in September, discontinued offering leveraged forex trading services to US retail clients with less than $10 million in deposited assets as of 1 September, also due to regulatory requirements.
The top performer on the US market by amount of deposits of retail clients continues to be Forex Capital Markets, or FXCM, holding 34.8% of the market’s total. The broker handled in September $180.6 in client assets, which is 2.3% higher than a month earlier and 3.7% down year-on-year.
It was followed by Oanda Corp. and Gain Capital Group which had retail client deposits of $131.6 million and $130.4 million, respectively.
Three out of five brokers saw client assets posting a monthly increase ( up to 6.1%) in September. Interactive Brokers reported a 16% monthly drop and Oanda saw a slight decrease of 2.5% over the month.
More details about the US market’s retail forex deposits statistics for September 2016 follow:
Forex broker | Total retail forex obligation Sept ‘16 | Total retail forex obligation Aug ‘16 | M/M change | Total retail forex obligation Sept ’15 | Y/Y change |
Forex Capital Markets LLC | $180,555,585 | $176,508,820 | +2.3% | $187,415,797 | -3.7% |
Gain Capital Group LLC | $130,430,508 | $129,493,930 | +0.7% | $115,599,413 | +12.8% |
IBFX INC | – | – | – | $48,140,877 | – |
Interactive Brokers LLC | $27,683,730 | $32,956,929 | -16% | $52,654,379 | -47.4% |
MB Trading Futures INC | – | – | – | $18,960,231 | – |
Oanda Corporation | $131,618,072 | $135,016,717 | -2.5% | $100,996,412 | +30.3% |
Wedbush Securities INC | – | – | – | $42,991,944 | – |
RJ OBrien Associates LLC | – | – | – | $1,547,940 | – |
TD Ameritrade Futures & Forex LLC | $48,301,551 | $45,513,974 | +6.1% | – | – |
TOTAL | $518,589,446 | $519,490,370 | -0.2% | $568,306,993 | -8.7% |
