Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
Despite the 38% drop from October, IG Group Holdings PLC (LON:IGG) retains its leading position in terms of forex brokers’ market cap. The other two UK brokers in our market cap chart, however, moved downward, outperformed by Japanese peers GMO Click and Monex Group.
In fact, after the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) proposed stricter rules for forex brokers, IG Group, Plus500 and CMC Markets saw their shares open on Tuesday by a double-digit drop. The FCA intends to ban trading bonuses and set leverage cap of 1:50 on CFDs, a move, which of course affects markets in a significant way.
Here is the up-to-date ranking of publicly-held leading forex brokers’ market capitalization:
| FX Broker | Market Cap (in billions of dollars) | Change % | |
| Oct 19 | Dec 8 | ||
| 1. IG Group | 3.75 | 2.32 | -38.1 |
| 2. GMO Click | 0.84 | 0.92 | 9.5 |
| 3. Monex Group | 0.64 | 0.83 | 29.7 |
| 4. Plus 500 | 0.92 | 0.55 | -40.2 |
| 5. CMC Markets | 0.71 | 0.42 | -40.8 |
| 6. Gain Capital | 0.27 | 0.27 | – |
| 7. XTB | 0.21 | 0.21 | – |
| 8. KVB Kunlun | 0.18 | 0.17 | -5.5 |
| 9. Money Partners Group | 0.16 | 0.16 | – |
| 10. Hirose | 0.07 | 0.10 | 42.9 |
| 11. FXCM | 0.04 | 0.05 | 25 |
IG Group’s total dollar market value of shares currently amounts to $2.32 billion (or GBX 1.83 billion), while in mid-October it came in at $3.75 billion. Nonetheless, it is way ahead of the rest and retains its leading position. We remind you that IG became the largest retail FX broker by market cap in August, after US giant Interactive Brokers discontinued offering forex trading services to retail clients.
At present, the market capitalization of UK forex and spread betting broker CMC Markets (LON:CMCX) amounts to GBX 332.26M (USD 0.42 billion), sinking by more than 40% from October. This is the reason why it CMC Markets is outperformed not only by GMO Click, but also by Monex Group (TYO:8698). The shares of the brokerage were probably affected in a negative way not only because of the disturbing proposals by FCA, but also due to its poor H1 FY 2017 results with both profit and trade values decline.
Similarly, the two Japanese brokers got ahead of Plus500 (LON:PLUS), regardless of the fact that one of the major stakeholders in the UK company, Odey Asset Management, raised stake amid FCA-caused stock price dip. Plus500’s market capitalization of shares declined by 40.2% from October and thus, the broker, who was a solid second since August, dropped to 4th place in our market cap chart
Meanwhile, Monex Group’s total dollar market value of shares surged by 29.7% from October and the company moved two places up in our market cap chart, making it the third largest broker. Likewise, its Japanese peer GMO Click (TYO:7177) registered a 9.5% increase in its total dollar market value of shares, and became the second largest broker by market cap.
