Percent Profitable Traders by Broker

Profitability in Q4 of 2010. Number in parenthesis is total open non discretionary accounts, defined as an account that has executed as least one live trade in the time period.

Advanced Markets: 46% (108 low sample size!)
Oanda: 43.5% (48,886)
GFT: 32% (9878)
FX Direct: 32% (7893)
Alpari US: 30% (1547)
Interback FX: 28% (13699)
GAIN: 28% (14628)
FX Solutions 27% (5481)
MB Trading: 26% (4478)
IG Markets: 26% (378)
Forex Capital Markets: 23% (18362)
Principal Financial: 21.3% (1791)
Forex Club: 19% (2465)

CFTC asks brokers to compute profitability based on this forumula, but it's not guaranteed that brokers use this formula:

Profitibility = Ending Balance - Beginning Balance + Withdrawals - Deposits + Commissions and fees

Source: All About Forex Trading by Jagerson and Hansen (their sources are the Risk Disclosure statement of each broker)


One thing I don't like about the equation is that it adds back commissions and fees. At the end of the day, I don't care how many pips or dollars I made in the trade, I care about how much more money I've accumulated, i.e Ending Balance - Beginning Balance + Withdrawals - Deposits

One potential bias I can see is that non-commission brokers (such as Oanda) can exaggerate their fees in the equation by overstating their profits from the spread.

Thoughts?

http://forexmagnates.com/us-forex-br...t-for-q2-2011/

Thanks. Any reasons why Oanda consistently has higher % of traders?

Should have investigation for that....surely! Maybe coz they have the largest total accounts/ clients....

The amount of accounts couldn't make impact on ratio profit | loss.


Very interesting information.

Thanks for sharing

Josef