Growth in retail FX brokerage

Little noticed by BIS, retail investment regulators, and the public at large, retail FX volume has surged in the past 10 to 12 years to reach an impressive US$280 billion per day, roughly 6% of the overall FX market and 18% of the spot FX market. This buzzing market grew on the opaque OTC side of the market, with a few hundred FX brokers of various sizes growing their business purely online and with the help of introducing brokers and Web affiliates. While a good number of these specialist brokers only offer spot FX, an increasing number of them promote various forms of FX (spot FX, contracts for difference [CFDs], FX options, and binary options) and have added other asset classes such as equities, commodities, and fixed income products.