CFTC metrics, as of September 30, for the 5 U.S. retail forex brokers

Broker Discussion
1

Customer funds held by the five U.S. forex brokers

• In the month ended September 30, four of the five U.S. forex brokers increased the customer funds they hold on deposit.

• IG Markets (US) posted the largest increase (13%), which moved them up to a 4% market-share.

• Interactive Brokers shed 1% of their customer funds on deposit.

Market-shares of the U.S. brokers

• In terms of market-shares, Gain and Oanda continue as the big players in the top tier, with 38% and 35% of the market, respectively.

• In the second tier, Interactive Brokers and TD Ameritrade are close to equal in market-shares, with each holding about 12% of all U.S. forex customer funds.

• IG Markets, the newest entrant into the regulated U.S. market, has the smallest market share, but is the fastest growing of the five brokers.

Finance Magnates article —

Finance Magnates table —

U.S. broker market share (35) - 2020 September
U.S. broker market share (35) - 2020 September1634×466 34.5 KB

Here is a LINK to the complete CFTC data-set (in .pdf) for September.

2

All this is a good thing for the forex industry in the US right? :open_mouth:

3

Hi ponponwei,

Don’t read too much into one month’s data. Monthly fluctuations in the funds on deposit, or in the
market-share of a particular broker, are not indicative of the long-term prospects for that broker.

And the overall retail forex industry in the U.S. can’t be judged on the basis of a one-month snapshot.

If you want to see meaningful trends in the retail forex industry in the U.S., it would be more instructive to compare the numbers over a multi-year period — rather than over a 30-day period.

I don’t know whether your interest runs deep enough to spend some time, and do some research. But, if it does, here are some tables of data that you might dig into.

Here are four years of CFTC data, as excerpted and tabulated by Finance Magnates. These are the tables published by Finance Magnates in November of 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, showing data for the months of September 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. (Note the 35- or 40-day lag between the time the data was collected, and the time of publication.)

You will notice that IG Markets is absent from the first two tables, because they were not yet a registered U.S. broker in September 2017, or September 2018.

Also, the September 2020 table is the same one posted here yesterday (in post #1, above).

Here are the four tables for you to work with (click on the images to enlarge them) —

September 2017

U.S. broker market share (8) - 2017 September
U.S. broker market share (8) - 2017 September1267×370 136 KB

September 2018
U.S. broker market share (15) - 2018 September
U.S. broker market share (15) - 2018 September1569×406 184 KB

September 2019

U.S. broker market share (23) - 2019 September
U.S. broker market share (23) - 2019 September1627×460 33.7 KB

September 2020

U.S. broker market share (35) - 2020 September
U.S. broker market share (35) - 2020 September1634×466 34.5 KB

I’m curious to know what jumps out at you, when you look at these four tables.

4

Hmm. Didn’t realize IG wasn’t a registered broker until 2019.

Also, wow that’s a little misleading that headline considering IG only has 4% share of the market lol. Although they doubled that from 2019. Great PR work! :joy:

Looking at totals… that’s a huge jump from 2018 to 2019? :open_mouth: I thought 2020 would be larger because everyone seemed to have started trading at the height of Covid back in March/April. How did Oanda get such huge numbers!