FX week in review: CFD brokers called out, FXStreet revenue, OANDA sues StoneX

Gerald Segal 0 Comments January 9, 2021

The first full working week (sort of!) of 2021 was not a dull one by any measure, either in the markets, in politics, or in the FX industry.

A number of FX sector companies continue to reshape and prepare for the challenges of the new year, and all the key executive moves of early 2021 were reported exclusively at FNG.

Why did a number of shares brokers in the UK petition the FCA about the CFD brokers?

How did FXStreet perform in 2020, in terms of both revenue and visitor stats?

Why is OANDA suing StoneX?

How did the shares of publicly traded Retail FX brokers fare in 2020?

Answers to these questions and a whole lot more appeared first or exclusively this week at FNG. Some of the top FX industry news stories to appear this past week on FNG included:

Exclusive: UK share brokers petition FCA over CFD broker tactics. FNG Exclusive… FNG has learned that several UK online shares brokers have been pushing the FCA to intervene and enact stricter rules for CFD brokers. Or at a minimum to better enforce existing rules. The shares brokers are claiming that not all CFD brokers are following the rules of posting required risk disclosures regarding leveraged CFD trading. All brokers offering leveraged FX and CFD trading in the UK (and EU) must post highly visible warnings about the risk of leverage on all websites and marketing material, as well as disclosure about what percentage of clients lose money. The move comes as competition has increased significantly over the past 12 months between CFD (or “Forex”) brokers, and shares brokers.

FXStreet hits €8M revenue and 55M sessions in 2020. Trader information portal FXStreet has released some of its top line and user figures for 2020, indicating significant growth leading to record results for the Barcelona based company. FXStreet said that it added nearly 10 million users last year, jumping 79% from 12 million users in 2019 to 21.5 million in 2020. The site grew 48% in sessions, jumping from 37 million sessions in 2019 to 54.7 million last year. In page views, the site grew 38%, going from 64 million page views in 2019 to 87 million in 2020. FXStreet noted that all of its top-five geographic locations (by country) sending traffic to FXStreet’s various websites grew over 100% in 2020 – U.S., Australia, Canada, India – except the UK, which grew “only” by 20%.

OANDA takes StoneX to Court for alleged patent infringement. OANDA Corporation is suing StoneX Group Inc (NASDAQ:SNEX) over alleged patent infringement. OANDA’s complaint, seen by FX News Group, was filed at the Illinois Northern District Court. The patents at the core of this legal dispute are U.S. Patents Nos. 7,356,504 (the ʼ504 Patent), 7,702,548 (the ’548 Patent), and 7,742,959 (the ʼ959 Patent). OANDA is the owner of these three patents. OANDA notes that the claims of the ʼ548 Patent are not directed to an abstract idea or concept. Rather, they are directed to specific implementations of computerized trading systems and interfaces for trading currencies.

Exclusive: Retail FX broker shares up 200%+ in 2020. FNG Exclusive Analysis… The year 2020 will be remembered for a number of things, starting with the first global pandemic in over a century. But from a purely financial perspective, 2020 will go down as another year in a decade-plus long bull market rally. When all the numbers are tallied for the year we see that the wide-ranging S&P500 index is up 16%, although other international indices didn’t do quite as well despite huge rallies from March’s COVID-driven lows. One of the sectors which did really well in 2020, much better than the overall stock market, was Retail Forex. On average, the shares of Retail FX brokers were up by 216% in 2020.