The Japanese GMO Click Securities Dominated the FX Scene in 2021

In 2021, all eyes were on Cryptocurrency markets, as Bitcoin was heading in the direction of the $100,000 barrier. It failed to continue the growth as of November, closing the almost one-year-long saga. However, in the background of crypto trading, a lot was going on in retail forex trading.

The FX/CFD industry itself has witnessed some major changes, including important acquisitions as well as an attempt of an IPO in the CFD brokerage sector by one of the brokers. Few brokers managed to break the $1 trillion barrier when it comes to the monthly retail CFD volumes.

But, the real winner of last year was GMO Click Securities. The Japanese broker once again dominated the global FX retail scene. According to Finance Magnates Intelligence research, GMO Click Securities finished the year with an average monthly FX volume of $817 billion. That was slightly higher than the second broker in the rank, which had a result of $796 billion. Together with GMO, there were only three brokers with a result higher than $700 billion.

As was said, that is not the first time GMO Click Securities has dominated the FX scene. The year before, in 2020, GMO Click finished with an impressive result of $1,073 billion of FX retail volume monthly. None of the other brokers in our rank had an annual result above the 1 trillion mark.

The distance in 2020 to a leader was bigger, and the GMO Click was higher. Only two other brokers in our rank managed to have an average monthly FX volume above the $500 billion mark in 2020. All remaining competitors had results even below the $400 billion mark. The biggest non-Japanese broker was third in our rank. It will be interesting to see if the gap to GMO Click will reduce in 2022, or if the Japanese broker will be able to run away from the competitor.

Not Only Retail Forex

GMO group is present in many sectors of the financial market, not only in FX. In 2021, the Japanese giant was active in the crypto and blockchain scene too. In June, it entered the non-fungible token (NFT) business with the establishment of a new joint venture. Later in September, INX Limited, which operates a regulated crypto exchange and a security token platform, announced its partnership with GMO-Z.com Trust Company (GMO Trust).