Survivor ’09 – Last US Forex broker standing
When you hear the word ‘regulation’ what immediately comes to your mind? Is that something good or bad? To me,
When you hear the word ‘regulation’ what immediately comes to your mind? Is that something good or bad? To me, that is always something grey, bureaucratic, NFA, cumbersome, rigid, etc. Now we have one more reason to frown when we hear that word.
So how many US brokers do you think have survived the NFA requirements tsunami which swamped the Forex industry in the past year or so? Given the competitiveness in the market and the abundance of online and offline ads you might say 50 or maybe 30 or even 20 if you are a real skeptic.
Actually it’s closer to 14. Yes, that much.
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Back in October 2008 there were at least 29 of them. That’s a 60% decrease in 6 months…
With NFA inventing new impractical requirements every couple of months and FXCM acquiring one broker’s customer base after another the US Forex industry is undergoing a significant consolidation process. What used to be thriving and very competitive industry is now becoming more and more regulated and centrist and this is really bad news for consumers. The less competitive the market the worse is the bargaining power of the consumer.
NFA failed in its bid to make the markets better and made them worse by making all the wrong moves that were possible.
The Forex survivors, so far, are (registered with NFA as of March 2009):
Oanda
FXCM
Gain
GFT
FX Solutions
IBFX
PFG
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CMS FX
IG Markets
Forex Club
MB Trading
Alpari – Just entered the US market
Ikon (Tradeview)
Easy Forex
I-Trade – sold its retail business to FXCM
ODL – sold its retail business to FXCM
Advanced Markets (amifx.com not the Swiss ACM)
GFS– announced its exit from US market
FXDD – is in registration process, though it might encounter few problems…
Give the NFA a few more months and the number of brokers goes below 10. Guaranteeed.
Michael
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I noticed Advanced Markets is not on your list. http://www.amifx.com
What is their statis
I’m using FXDD and is not on your list. Please can you tell me what you know about them?
Thanks
Best regards
Mario
what about Marketiva and AvaFX?
thanks for the great article. I wonder what is really going on with all these regulations?
what about forex.com
Thanks for this great post. Regulation can both be a savior and a thread to any industry. It protects customers against the scams there are definitely out the there, making sure traders got their funds at a safe place. Now the NFA is slowly shifting to the side where it imposes a thread to the industry. I’m not sure whether they want to get rid of forex brokers or they want to protect the consumer from danger. Bringing back the list of brokers to only a handful will certainly not improve the competitiveness of this industry and potentially harm our… Read more »
Hi Michael,
Just to clarify, easy-forex is registered, licensed and active in the US. Our Chicago office is alive and well. NFA ID: 0358754.
Hi Michael,
Re FXDD. To the best of my knowledge they are currently part of Tradition SA (i.e. French) – NFA ID: 0271750. Their own NFA membership (ID: 0397435) is indeed pending.
Cheers,
Jim
Hi,
What about MADAfx ?
Any news?
Tnsk,
Jim
what about mf global, dbfx, & citipro? i dont see what the big deal is. i’d rather the list be narrowed down to 10-20 good brokers than have 30-50 questionable ones to chose from. i would not go w/ anyone not on this list anyway. i trade w/ oanda, i chart w/ mt4, & i dont see any forseeable reason to deviate.
what about FXOpen.com….?
Hi mainfx: FXOpen.com is not regulated by the NFA, it appears to be regulated in Mauritius…
Lite-forex?
not US regulated
Hi Michael,
You never commented about Advanced Markets not being on the list.
Hi Linda,
Thanks for following up. I confused amifx.com with ACM (same name) who gave up on the NFA and now mostly focus on Europe and ME.
amifx.com is registered with the NFA and I will edit that in the post.
Best,
Michael
The best information i have found exactly here. Keep going Thank you
From a business cycle perspective this is all very common. A new market sector is identified by entrepreneur’s (retail FX) and they are quickly able to take advantage of it. Bigger players (such as banks in FX) don’t see the possibilities initially in these markets because they already have volume and high profit margins. Later as the new sector becomes established there tends to be an awakening by the big players that they better get a share of it. This sparks the consolidation process and return to size normally associated with most industries. Business on the Internet has only recently… Read more »
What about MG Forex?
To be honest I would just type in Forex broker into google. If it’s not in the top 10 then do not use it. I see so many replies here of how about this? How about that? Do 30 minutes of research to see if your broker is backed by a fair amount of capital. See if you can find out how many clients they have too. You might as well just throw your money out the window if you’re not going to use a top forex broker because the bucket shops are just that, bucket shops that have no… Read more »
FXDD Registration pending……….I’ve heard that line for years.
Anyone know what happened to TradeView team, they were first sales team for ODL, Then 1World, then RCG TradeView, then Ikon TradeView now it seems their peddling training classes..