Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
The combined retail forex client deposits of brokers operating in the US continues to slowly, but steadily stabilize, indicated the latest data provided by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). For January 2017, brokers’ forex client assets stood at $532.4 million, which represents an increase both over the month and year-on-year of 1.3% and 6.6%, respectively.
The market is recovering from a very stagnant 2016 when the number of market participants shrunk and the amount of trader deposits stayed low throughout the whole year, below the levels of the lowest monthly value for the preceding year.
In January this year, the market continues to be led by Forex Capital Markets, or FXCM, which handled $183.4 million in retail forex client deposits. The amount represents more than a third of the market’s total.
Oanda Corp. was US’ second largest broker by deposits. Traders had more than $134.5 million with the broker. It was followed by Gain Capital, which in January had some $126.9 million in retail forex client assets.
In January 2017, there were just five retail forex brokers operating in the US. However, currently their number has fallen to four after in early February the market leader, FXCM, was kicked out of the country by the local relevant regulators. The broker was found to trade against clients and provide them with misleading information.
FXCM sold its US client base to Gain Capital, which, if it manages to keep all clients, will account for more than half of the US forex market by amount of retail deposits.
More details about the US market’s retail forex deposits statistics for January 2017 follow:
Forex broker | Total retail forex obligation Jan ’17 | Total retail forex obligation Dec ‘16 | M/M change | Total retail forex obligation Jan ’16 | Y/Y change |
Forex Capital Markets LLC | $183,422,554 | $178,977,382 | +2.5% | $176,516,399 | +3.9% |
Gain Capital Group LLC | $126,888,959 | $128,503,549 | -1.3% | $135,259,767 | -6.2% |
IBFX INC | – | – | – | $48,979,331 | – |
Interactive Brokers LLC | $36,585,526 | $33,452,977 | +9.4% | $37,130,215 | -1.5% |
Oanda Corporation | $134,545,222 | $134,545,221 | +7.4% | $97,133,939 | +38.5 |
Wedbush Securities INC | – | – | – | $4,319,433 | – |
TD Ameritrade Futures & Forex LLC | $50,972,744 | $50,261,654 | +1.4% | – | – |
TOTAL | $532,415,005 | $525,740,783 | +1.3% | $499,339,084 | +6.6% |
