The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has released its monthly composite of key figures and data for Futures Commission Merchants (FCMs), this time for the month ending in January 2014.
The statistics entail a variety of findings, notably data for FCMs that are registered as Retail Foreign Exchange Dealers (RFEDs) and those also included as broker dealers that file and hold retail Forex obligations in the United States. According to the CFTC dataset, over half of the FX firms listed notched increases in Retail Forex obligation in USD – collectively, this entailed an overall rise to $600,781,807 at the end of January, compared to $605,104,496 at the end of December, or an incremental increase of 0.72% MoM.
Five of Ten FCMs Witness Rise in Retail Forex Obligation MoM
Out of the ten reporting FCMs that hold Retail Forex Obligations, five of them (Forex Capital Markets LLC, FXDirectDealer LLC, GAIN Capital LLC, OANDA Corporation and RJ Obrien Associates LLC) reported higher figures in January – the largest single increase was made by RJ Obrien Associates LLC, which saw a meteoric surge of 1848.10% MoM.
Conversely, IBFX Inc., Interactive Brokers LLC, KCG Americas LLC, and MB Trading Futures Inc., all yielded declines MoM in Retail Forex Obligations. The single largest drop was held by Interactive Brokers, falling -9.04% MoM – alternatively, Institutional Liquidity LLC saw its Retail Forex Obligation plunge to 0. Forex Magnates reached out to the CFTC to ascertain the context and clarification behind Institutional Liquidity's staunch drop in January Retail Forex Obligations. Mark Krier, CEO of ILQ, stated to Forex Magnates that the 0 figure is incorrect and that they were investigating the report.
The chart listed below outlines the full list of all ten FCMs that held Retail Forex obligations in the month ending in January – for purposes of comparison, the figures have been included against their December counterparts to illustrate any disparities.
CFTC Reported FCM Data for December 2013 for Retail Forex Obligations Held [Source CFTC.gov]
