Hi everyone

Today I had the luck and the pleasure to read LeapRate’s report: Online Trading: Not just Retail and not just Forex anymore…….Online Financial Trading grows up

It is a 32 pages report that gives you a pretty good picture of the current situation of the retail Forex market and the impact that retail vs. institutional and CFD trading are having in the trading volumes of retail Forex brokers.

One of the themes covered in this report and that attracted my attention the most was the size and pace growth of the retail Forex Market.

As we all now, The BIS’s triennial report released in September 2010 reported that the overall Forex market grew in size around 20% from $3.3 billion in daily turnover in April 2007 to $4.0 million by 2010. However, LeapRate points out that BIS report missed to highlight that what drove almost the entire growth was a 48% rise in “spot” transactions, from $1.0 to $1.5
trillion daily. They believe that a lot (if not most) of that “spot” growth was due to the increase in activity during the period of online trading firms (retail), and their continued integration into the traditional FX financial system.

Back in September, our friend and colleague Michael Greenberg at Forex Magnates estimated the size of the Retail Forex Business as of September 2010 in $165 billion daily.

LeapRate estimates that retail FX volumes total today about $200 billion daily, or about 5% of the overall global FX market. Nevertheless, this represents tremendous growth, from under $10 billion per day 10 years ago.

If their growth numbers are correct, this represents a growth of 2,000% in the last 10 years.

Good job LeapRate!

Francesc

Note: The report excerpt can be downloaded by clicking:

http://www.leaprate.com/uploads/LeapRate_Online_Trading_Report_2010_Excerpts.pdf

To purchase the complete version of the report please contact us at info@leaprate.com.