Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
Retail forex deposits with US brokers amounted to $520.3 million in October 2016, reaching their highest since the beginning of the year, indicated the latest monthly report of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) published on Wednesday. However, they are still below the lowest monthly reported in 2015 of $544.1 million.
The October retail deposits figure represents a slight increase of 0.3% from the preceding month and a drop of 8.4% over the year.
Forex Capital Markets, or FXCM, continues to lead the market by client assets with nearly $175.6 million deposited with it. It was followed by Oanda Corp. and Gain Capital Group which had retail client deposits of $133.8 million and $127.7 million, respectively.
Oanda was the only broker to report a growth in client assets both on a monthly and annual basis. Interactive Brokers saw an increase on a monthly basis, while all other forex brokers posted a drop in client assets month-on-month and over the year.
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 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.
More details about the US market’s retail forex deposits statistics for October 2016 follow:
Forex broker | Total retail forex obligation Oct ‘16 | Total retail forex obligation Sept ‘16 | M/M change | Total retail forex obligation Oct ’15 | Y/Y change |
Forex Capital Markets LLC | $175,572,998 | $180,555,585 | -2.8% | $182,209,034 | -3.6% |
Gain Capital Group LLC | $127,661,648 | $130,430,508 | -2.1% | $133,727,082 | -4.5% |
IBFX INC | – | – | – | $51,356,097 | – |
Interactive Brokers LLC | $35,288,042 | $27,683,730 | +27.8% | $55,206,699 | -36.1% |
MB Trading Futures INC | – | – | – | $140,538 | – |
Oanda Corporation | $133,771,911 | $131,618,072 | +1.6% | $101,016,970 | +32.4% |
Wedbush Securities INC | – | – | – | $44,494,493 | – |
RJ OBrien Associates LLC | – | – | – | $4,208 | – |
TD Ameritrade Futures & Forex LLC | $48,012,412 | $48,301,551 | -0.6% | – | – |
TOTAL | $520,307,011 | $518,589,446 | +0.3% | $568,155,121 | -8.4% |
