CFTC Releases Data: Interactive Brokers Saw Significant Drop in January Retail FX Deposits

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has published its monthly report for January 2022, revealing a month-on-month decline of 2.73 percent in retail FX deposits compared with the $543.8 million reported in December 2021.

The report covers data for FCMs that are registered as Retail Foreign Exchange Dealers (RFEDs) and those included as broker-dealers that hold retail forex obligations in the United States, namely Gain Capital Group LLC, IG US LLC, Interactive Brokers LLC, Oanda Corporation and CHARLES SCHWAB Futures & Forex LLC.

Only Interactive Brokers Saw Decrease on Amount of Retail Forex Obligation

The chart listed below summarizes all the data published this year. For purposes of comparison, the month-on-month change of the recent months has been outlined to illustrate the disparities.

According to the agency, the FX funds held at the five registered brokerages hit over $529 million in January 2022. Four of the five brokers listed notched an increase in Retail Forex Obligations: Gain  Capital ($3,991,115 or 1.93%), IG US ($1,782,358 or 4.96%), OANDA ($5,162,371 or 2.75%) and CHARLES SCHWAB ($2,361,450 or 3.78%).

Only Interactive Brokers' retail FX deposits declined by 55.2 percent from $50.9 million in December 2021 to $22.8 million in January 2022.

Interactive Brokers Lose in Market Share

Looking at the market share of these five brokers, distribution changed slightly in January relative to the month prior.

Gain Capital is still the leading one of 40 percent market share, an increase of 2 percent compared with the previous month. OANDA has the second largest market share of 36 percent while CHARLES SCHWAB has the third one of 12 percent, an increase of 2 percent and 1 percent compared with the previous month respectively.

For the fall in retail forex obligation, Interactive Brokers decreased in market share of 5 percent. IG US's market share kept unchanged at 7 percent.