Despite an ongoing lull in the foreign Exchange (FX) market, the number of new retail traders opening accounts in the US grew exponentially in the first quarter of this year.
This growth came alongside a $15 million uptick in the volume of FX deposits in March of this year.
Research by Finance Magnates’ Intelligence Department found that traders opened just over 7,000 accounts in the first three months of this year.
In the final quarter of 2018, 132,988 active retail FX trading accounts were operating in the US.
At the end of March this year, that number had grown to 140,065.
That represented a significant uptick in the number of new account openings when compared to the prior year.
In the first quarter of 2018, there 131,050 active accounts in the US. That grew to 132,412 in the second quarter, slipped back down to 131,498 in the third quarter and jumped up again to 132,988 in the final quarter.
Thus, in the whole of 2018, the number of active accounts in the US grew by 1,938, as opposed to 7,077 in just the first three months of this year.
$1.6 million in deposits
That growth was in part inspired by IG Group’s new US offering - IG US - which launch officially at the start of the year.
Research undertaken by Finance Magnates indicates that the brokerage giant’s American subsidiary onboarded 268 active clients in the first three months of the year.
Of those 268, 60 percent were profitable.
That may not sound like a lot but Forest Park FX, IG US’ introducing broker, told Finance Magnates in February that its average client deposit size was $11,000. For the US market in general, the introducing broker said, the average client deposit is $6,000.
Thus, if the average IG US client deposited $6,000, then the broker would approximately $1.6 million in deposits.
Figures, broken down by company, will be available in the next Finance Magnates Quarterly Intelligence Report. That report, which is going to be published in the coming week, can be downloaded from the Finance Magnates website.
