Fear is not good for the forex trader, but it is good for the industry. Various reports have shown that November, that began with QE2 and continued by daily headlines from the Irish crisis, was an excellent month. Will the newcomers stay in forex?
The listing of FXCM as a public company enables us an insight of trends in the industry. November saw improvements in all fields:
Here are some numbers:
November 2010
- Retail customer trading volume(1) of $322 billion in November 2010,17% higher than October 2010 and 6% higher than November 2009.
- An average of 344,834 retail client trades per day in November 2010,4% higher than October 2010 and 5% higher than November 2009.
- Tradeable accounts(2) of 179,989 as of November 30, 2010, an increase of 4,161 accounts or 2% from October 31, 2010 and an increase of 42,941 accounts or 31% from November 30, 2009.
We can also see it using a report from Francesc Riverola, CEO of FXStreet, who reported new highs for fxstreet.com and for the whole group of sites:
FXstreet.com English site reached new all-time highs of everything unique visitors, visits and page views, touching 590,832 unique visitors, 2,322,423 visits and 6,648,143 page views.
FXstreet Network is on its way to 790K unique visitors, while it broke 3M visits and 9M page views to touch788,407 unique visitors, 3.038.691 visits and 9,059,080 page views.
Also here in Forex Crunch, I’ve seen a rise of 15% in traffic compared to October.
All in all, the worries about the troubles in the US, which were quickly replaced by the European debt crisis, created high volatility in foreign exchange, and especially with the most popular pair: EUR/USD.
Higher volatility in forex, and dropping stocks, shift attention to currency trading, and contribute to the growth of the industry. The strongest effect was seen in Q4 of 2008, with the global financial crisis that brought stocks down and forex volatility up.
Let’s hope that the newcomers to forex will stay also when the times are better.
