Top Forex Brokers report over $105B in daily traded volume - May 2010

I know you’ve been expecting it so here it is: The largest and most up-to-date report detailing the average trading volumes by retail Forex brokers. The report shows that all prior estimates were far from the actual figures. Retail forex volume doubled itself in less than two years and the total average daily volume is well above $100B.

Largest retail Forex broker, as you probably already know, is FXCM with Oanda coming in at a distant second place. It looks like FXCM’s world Forex domination is all but complete and all that is left for others is the competition for 2nd and 3rd places. Good luck Oanda, Gain, Saxo and GFT.

The numbers as were officially, and to some extent unofficially, released by the brokers themselves:

The figures are incomplete as some brokers such as FXDD, FX Solutions and CMS simply don’t report or disclose their numbers.

It is my estimate that the non-reporting, non-disclosing brokers are able to contribute at least 20-30B more to the daily traded volume, meaning that the total reported and estimated volume is in the range of $130-140 billion dollars a day.

A year ago I was sure retail Forex growth was about to slow down, guess I was wrong. Who wonders if $140B is the limit?

* – based on 2007 numbers and taking the average retail volumes growth since into account

** – based on report that GFT and Gain were pretty identical in size in 2007 and currently have similar cash piles