Research company Investment Trends has released a report focusing on the nation which is home to Asia’s largest institutional FX industry: Singapore.
In the FX trading space, OANDA made the leap to take the #1 FX broker position with 18% market share. OANDA was followed by a trio of UK spreadbetting firms – IG, CMC and City Index – as well as domestic firm Phillip Futures, rounding out the top five. It seems as though other global FX leaders such as Saxo Bank (#7), FXCM (#14), , FxPro (#16), and AvaTrade (#22) still have work to do in the Singapore FX market.
The other notable aspect of the Singapore report was mobile trading. Trading on a mobile device is more popular in Singapore than in any other jurisdiction surveyed by Investment Trends including the UK, Australia, the US and Germany, as demonstrated in the following table:
Whilst Singapore is renowned for its vault-like banking system and extremely advanced interbank and institutional FX business, retail FX is indeed very popular among astute Singaporean investors, with Investment Trends having reported in detail on which firms lead the pack in the Asian nation.
CFD trader numbers in Singapore held their ground preventing a third consecutive year of losses during 2014, however, FX trader numbers have fallen in each of the past 4 years.
Being a wealthy, technologically literate population, Singaporean traders are more likely to use their mobile/tablet devices for trading than any other country studied by Investment Trends, with the Android phone becoming the preferred mobile device among CFD and FX traders, with a preference of brokerage reflecting this line of thinking as OANDA emerged as the most preferred brokerage among the 10,656 traders surveyed.
The number of active CFD traders in Singapore (those who placed at least one trade in the previous 12 months) remained steady at 17,000 between September 2013 and September 2014, correcting two consecutive years of losses in trader numbers, decreasing by 13% to 13,000, down from 15,000 in 2013.
This downward trend has persisted over the last five years, but seems to be leveling off with a lower contraction rate reported over the past 12 months. “There is good reason to be optimistic about the Singaporean FX market with a size of the ‘next wave’ population nearly on par with the current market: 10,000 traders (up from 8,000 in 2013) currently do not trade FX but intend to start in the next 12 months”, said Investment Trends analyst Irene Guiamatsia.
Out of all countries surveyed by Investment Trends, only the German CFD/FX, the UK CFD and the Australian CFD markets posted a growth in the past year. There were substantial changes in market shares among the top brokers in both the CFD and FX markets.
Domestic company Phillip CFD/Futures, along with British multi-asset electronic trading company IG Group continue to be the largest CFD brokers in Singapore. Recently acquired City Index is the only broker amongst the top 4 who has seen year-on-year increases in market share over the past 5 years and now ranks third with 14% market share.
The picture was markedly different among high value clients (the top 20% of traders in terms of trading volume). In this segment, IG is the top broker among high value CFD clients, whilst OANDA leads among high value FX clients.