A sudden pull back in assets for April has US based retail FX brokers reporting their second lowest combined asset total on record.
US regulated retail Forex brokers saw client assets drop 2.9% during the month of April to $562 million down from the $579 million reported in March. The lowest point since record keeping began came back in December 2014 when $551 million in assets were reported.
The latest research from LeapRate’s Retail FX Volume Index showed that currency trading globally picked up nicely in March after January’s Swiss Franc crisis muted February volumes and clients both traded and deposited more to their FX accounts. It looks like the opposite may be true for April as many clients may have took their money and ran as April volume figures came in mostly muted which in turn could have slowed interest in the FX market, otherwise could we be seeing a shift of USA retail accounts flocking to exchange traded FX futures?
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Among the US industry leaders, FXCM Inc (NYSE:FXCM) was down 3.2% and Gain Capital Holdings Inc (NYSE:GCAP) recovered 1.1% (the only gain MoM among the big 3), while OANDA remained unchanged from the previous month.
The industry in the US remains highly concentrated, with the ‘Big Three’ aforementioned brokers accounting for 70% of market share.
Other notables from the report are Wedbush Securities which shed 15.7% in client assets to bring it below $50M; and RJ O’Brian which recorded a gain that pushed it’s assets over the $1M mark (see chart and table below).
To view the official release (PDF) from the CFTC, click here.