The Acquisition of Plus500, on Japanese Market Scale and May Metrics

The second week of June passed through the markets with fears of a Greek default rising and the first news about the progress of unfreezing client accounts at Plus500 being announced. Around the end of last week we also got confirmation regarding the next steps for shareholders of the brokerage company listed in London.

It is going to be a long month of waiting for all shareholders regardless of whether they support the acquisition from Playtech or not. The biggest institutional shareholder of Plus500 shares, Odey Asset Management, holding more than 25% of the company, has about a month to convince as many investors as possible that the deal with Playtech is unfavorable.

Plus500 Shareholders Vote

Shareholders of Plus500 will vote on the deal on the 16th of July. The firm hired additional staff to unfreeze accounts and have reported that about 60% of unfrozen accounts continue trading as usual. It remains to be seen in which way the scale will tilt - are investors in the company going to support Odey Asset Management or the board of Plus500?

As time goes by some brokers have reached immense heights, and the biggest Japanese broker by trading volumes, GMO Click, is also most likely the largest in terms of the number of trading accounts with the firm.

Japanese powerhouse GMO Click reported account numbers surpassing 400,000

The Japanese powerhouse has reported that during May the account numbers figures at the brokerage surpassed 400,000. While the result is impressive and the trading volumes at the broker continue to be close to $1 trillion per month despite recent declines, there’s also the question of how many of these accounts are actually trading.

Meanwhile, trading volumes metrics were reported by both FXCM and GAIN Capital for May, and for the first time in a while we have seen a big divergence. While GAIN’s figures dropped, FXCM’s have risen by some 8 percent.

Looking for reasons behind this, Finance Magnates' reporters found out that the Leverage Leverage In financial trading, leverage is a loan supplied by a broker, which facilitates a trader in being able to control a relatively large amount of money with a significantly lesser initial investment. Leverage therefore allows traders to make a much greater return on investment compared to trading without any leverage. Traders seek to make a profit from movements in financial markets, such as stocks and currencies.Trading without any leverage would greatly diminish the potential rewards, so traders In financial trading, leverage is a loan supplied by a broker, which facilitates a trader in being able to control a relatively large amount of money with a significantly lesser initial investment. Leverage therefore allows traders to make a much greater return on investment compared to trading without any leverage. Traders seek to make a profit from movements in financial markets, such as stocks and currencies.Trading without any leverage would greatly diminish the potential rewards, so traders Read this Term ratios available to clients of FXCM outside of the U.S. have been largely restored, which could be a big part of the increase in trading volumes for May.

Leverage ratios available to clients of FXCM outside of the U.S. have been largely restored

In the meantime, the U.S. Commodities and Futures Trading Commission has reported the figures filed by brokers operating within its jurisdiction. FXCM has continued losing market share in the U.S. while GAIN Capital has once again gained some ground on its biggest rival in the region. FXCM still has about 33% of client deposits in the U.S.

In the meantime, another regulatory body, the Cyprus Securities and Investments Commission (CySEC CySEC The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) is a financial regulatory authority of Cyprus. CySEC is one of the key watchdog authorities for brokerages in Europe, whose financial regulations and operations comply with the European MiFID financial harmonization law.Founded in 2001, CySEC is instrumental in providing licensing and registration for forex brokers and previously binary options providers.CySEC is responsible for a variety of different functions, which includes the supervision The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) is a financial regulatory authority of Cyprus. CySEC is one of the key watchdog authorities for brokerages in Europe, whose financial regulations and operations comply with the European MiFID financial harmonization law.Founded in 2001, CySEC is instrumental in providing licensing and registration for forex brokers and previously binary options providers.CySEC is responsible for a variety of different functions, which includes the supervision Read this Term), suspended the license of CommexFX claiming that the brokerage did not follow its customers' best interests. The regulator highlighted that the company had likely violated the “Safeguarding of client funds” clause of the Investment Services & Activities and Regulated Markets Law.