US forex brokers profitability drops in Q1 2012, TradeStation gains most accounts, GFT most profitable

• Total number of active US Forex Forex Foreign exchange or forex is the act of converting one nation’s currency into another nation’s currency (that possesses a different currency); for example, the converting of British Pounds into US Dollars, and vice versa. The exchange of currencies can be done over a physical counter, such as at a Bureau de Change, or over the internet via broker platforms, where currency speculation takes place, known as forex trading.The foreign exchange market, by its very nature, is the world’s largest tradi Foreign exchange or forex is the act of converting one nation’s currency into another nation’s currency (that possesses a different currency); for example, the converting of British Pounds into US Dollars, and vice versa. The exchange of currencies can be done over a physical counter, such as at a Bureau de Change, or over the internet via broker platforms, where currency speculation takes place, known as forex trading.The foreign exchange market, by its very nature, is the world’s largest tradi Read this Term accounts grew by modest 120 accounts (increase of 0.12%)
• TradeStation/IBFX merged their figures starting this quarter and showed the biggest increase in number of accounts
• GFT and OANDA keep battling for the first place in terms of clients profitability, this quarter GFT has the upper hand
• This quarter's profitability dropped for the first time since Q2 2011
• OANDA is still the largest broker when measuring US forex accounts only

US retail forex industry was back growing, if only a little, in Q1 2012 and US forex brokers were able to slightly increase the number of their clients. On the other hand overall profitability of clients dropped by 2.8% on average and 1.9% in weighted average for the first time since Q2 2011. Considering that Q1 2012 was not a volatile quarter this is somewhat surprising but then Q3 2011 was very volatile and profitability still increased so the correlation may be low.

CitiFX Pro revealed its numbers for the first time, just like Interactive Brokers did last quarter, number of accounts is low but when considering the average account size, which is probably as big as what dbFX had: ~$50,000 on average, the overall result is impressive.

1. CitiFX Pro, Interactive Brokers, ILQ and Advanced Markets aren't considered in the accounts and profitability calculations as their account sizes are either disproportionately big or include other trading instruments (as in Interactive Brokers case)
2. Weighted average calculates the relative change in profitability to reduce impact of smaller brokers

See Q4 2011 profitability report here and the Q3 2011 report here.