It's that time of year again Normally, the forex market trades 24 hours a day, 5 days a week without interruption even for major holidays around the world, and FXCM provides live customer support 24 hours a day even on weekends and holidays. However, Christmas and New Year's are the two exceptions. Here is a link to FXCM's holiday hours for trading and customer support during these holidays: http://bit.ly/2ih7xrW For everyone celebrating Christmas, I wish you a happy one! Happy New Year to all!
I will be out of the office until Thursday, December 29th and will respond to your posts and private messages when I return. For immediate assistance, you can contact our 24-hour live customer support.
FXCM Discusses Impact of U.S. Exit NEW YORK, Feb. 12, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- FXCM Inc. (NASDAQ:FXCM) ("FXCM" or the "Company") today provided additional information regarding the costs associated with its U.S. retail foreign exchange activities, which it has agreed to sell to GAIN Capital Holdings, Inc. ("GAIN"). None of FXCM's costs will be transferring to GAIN and FXCM expects significant cost savings from the wind down of its U.S. retail foreign exchange operations. The table below provides information on net revenues, net income, and Adjusted EBITDA* for FXCM's U.S. subsidiary, Forex Capital Markets LLC, and the rest of its continuing operations for the nine months ended September 30, 2016 (unaudited): Even without its U.S. customers, FXCM remains one of the largest global retail foreign exchange brokers, and FXCM anticipates that the increased focus on serving its international global customer base will drive growth and continued profitability improvement. * Adjusted EBITDA is a non-GAAP measure that is not prepared under any comprehensive set of accounting rules or principles and does not reflect all of the amounts associated with the Company's results of operations as determined in accordance with U.S. GAAP. The Company believes this non-GAAP measure, when presented in conjunction with the comparable U.S. GAAP measure, is useful to investors in better understanding its financial performance as seen through the eyes of management and facilitates comparisons of historical operating trends across several periods. The Company believes that investors use Adjusted EBITDA as a supplemental measure to evaluate the overall operating performance of companies in its industry that present similar measures, although the methods used by other companies in calculating Adjusted EBITDA may differ from the Company's method, even if similar terms are used to identify such measure. Adjusted EBITDA provides the Company with an understanding of the results from the primary operations of its business by excluding the effects of certain gains, losses or other charges that do not reflect the normal earnings of its core operations or that may not be indicative of its future outlook and prospects. Adjusted EBITDA does not represent and should not be considered as a substitute for net income or net income attributable to FXCM Inc., each as determined in accordance with U.S. GAAP. Please refer to the following table for a reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to net income. (1) Represents a $0.1 million charge for tax receivable agreement payments. (2) Represents the provision for debt forgiveness of $8.2 million against the notes receivable from the non-controlling members of Lucid, $5.4 million of professional fees, including fees related to the Leucadia restructuring transaction, stockholder rights plan and investigations into historical trade execution practices, partially offset by $1.0 million of insurance recoveries to reimburse for costs incurred related to the January 15, 2015 SNB event and the cybersecurity incident. (3) Represents the net bad debt recovery related to client debit balances associated with the January 15, 2015 SNB event. (4) Represents $2.4 million of professional fees relating to investigations into historical trade execution practices partially offset by $0.4 million of insurance recoveries to reimburse for costs incurred related to the January 15, 2015 SNB event and the cybersecurity incident. Disclosure Regarding Forward-Looking Statements In addition to historical information, this release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and/or the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which reflect FXCM's current views with respect to, among other things, its operations and financial performance in the future. These forward-looking statements are not historical facts and are based on current expectations, estimates and projections about FXCM's industry, business plans, management's beliefs and certain assumptions made by management, many of which, by their nature, are inherently uncertain and beyond our control. Accordingly, readers are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict including, without limitation, risks associated with FXCM's plans to shut down its US subsidiary and a potential sale of its US customer accounts, risks associated with FXCM's strategy to focus on its operations outside the United States, risks associated with the events that took place in the currency markets on January 15, 2015 and their impact on FXCM's capital structure, risks associated with FXCM's ability to recover all or a portion of any capital losses, risks relating to the ability of FXCM to satisfy the terms and conditions of or make payments pursuant to the terms of the finance agreements with Leucadia, as well as risks associated with FXCM's obligations under its other financing agreements, risks related to FXCM's dependence on FX market makers, market conditions, risks associated with FXCM's litigation with the National Futures Association and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission or any other potential litigation or regulatory inquiries to which FXCM may become subject, risks associated with potential reputational damage to FXCM resulting from FXCM's plans to shut down its US subsidiary, and those other risks described under "Risk Factors" in FXCM Inc.'s Annual Report on Form 10-K, FXCM Inc.'s latest Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, and other reports or documents FXCM files with, or furnishes to, the SEC from time to time, which are accessible on the SEC website at sec.gov. This information should also be read in conjunction with FXCM's Consolidated Financial Statements and the Notes thereto contained in FXCM's Annual Report on Form 10-K, FXCM Inc.'s latest Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, and in other reports or documents FXCM files with, or furnishes to, the SEC from time to time, which are accessible on the SEC website at sec.gov. These factors should not be construed as exhaustive and should be read in conjunction with the other cautionary statements that are included in this release and in our SEC filings. FXCM Inc. undertakes no obligation to publicly update or review any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise, except as required by law. About FXCM Inc. FXCM Inc. (NASDAQ:FXCM) is a publicly traded company which owns 50.1% of FXCM Group, LLC (FXCM Group). FXCM Group is a holding company of Forex Capital Markets LLC, (FXCM US), Forex Capital Markets Limited, inclusive of all EU branches (FXCM UK), FXCM Australia Pty. Limited, (FXCM AU), and all affiliates of aforementioned firms, or other firms under the FXCM group of companies [collectively "FXCM"]. FXCM Group is owned and operated by FXCM Inc. (NASDAQ:FXCM) and Leucadia National Corporation (NYSE:LUK). Leucadia National Corporation is a multi-billion dollar diversified holding company engaged through its consolidated subsidiaries in a variety of businesses. FXCM is a leading provider of online foreign exchange (FX) trading, CFD trading, spread betting and related services. The company's mission is to provide global traders with access to the world's largest and most liquid market by offering innovative trading tools, hiring excellent trading educators, meeting strict financial standards and striving for the best online trading experience in the market. Clients have the advantage of mobile trading, one-click order execution and trading from real-time charts. In addition, FXCM offers educational courses on FX trading and provides trading tools proprietary data and premium resources. FXCM Pro provides retail brokers, small hedge funds and emerging market banks access to wholesale execution and liquidity, while providing high and medium frequency funds access to prime brokerage services via FXCM Prime. Trading foreign exchange and CFDs on margin carries a high level of risk, which may result in losses that could exceed your deposits, therefore may not be suitable for all investors. Read full disclaimer. Jaclyn Sales, 646-432-2463 Vice-President, Corporate Communications jsales@fxcm.com investorrelations@fxcm.com
Of course your US operations lost $9,000,000 from Jan 1st 2016 to Sep 30, 2016. You guys were cheating in the US market and got caught, and booted from said US market. Happy trails.
Looks like CFTC just followed UK Regulators lead....or they were reading ET. Nice work again by CFTC. Are the customers that were scammed able to get a refund? The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has fined Forex Capital Markets Ltd and FXCM Securities Ltd (“FXCM UK”) £4,000,000 for allowing the US based FXCM Group to withhold profits worth approximately £6 million ($9,941,970) that should have been passed on to FXCM UK’s clients. https://www.fca.org.uk/news/press-r...xcm-uk-£4-million-making-‘unfair-profits’-and
Hi Overnight, While I can't comment on the NFA or CFTC complaint specifically due to the nature of our settlement, I can say that we have settled with the NFA and CFTC without admitting or denying any of their allegations or claims. It's worth noting that FXCM would not have suffered more than $200 millon dollars in losses during the SNB flash crash had it been taking the other side of client trades – unlike so many of the DD firms in the industry. I can also discuss with you FXCM's execution practices outside of the US. FXCM uses 16 liquidity providers to create a best bid best offer price stream for clients. LPs selected to price retail clients are forced to adhere to an extremely high standard of execution beyond just price – including consistently low rejection rates, low latency, minimum quote sizes and high fill ratios even during market events. We have made our execution study public in the UK which can be viewed here and is a transparent comparison of FXCM's actual execution vs top tier futures brokers and the interbank market. While part of our settlement with the NFA and CFTC was to close our US subsidiary, there will be no changes for clients outside of the US. Since FXCM US has not been a contributor to overall profits for the firm over the past few years, FXCM will target significant cost cutting by closing the US entity. Specifically, withdrawing from this business will free approximately $52 million in capital. We will use the proceeds from any sale of the US accounts, as well as the large amount of regulatory capital currently tied up, to reduce the balance of our loan from Leucadia. With the reduction of this loan balance, along with sales of non-core assets that were previously announced, FXCM could be in a position to fully pay off the Leucadia loan before the end of this year. With this exit, FXCM will be in a better position to service our international customers and focus on our profitable subsidiaries. Our full financials can be found here and we will announce our Q4 and full year 2016 financials in the next few weeks.
If I was your USA client, I would not care about what losses YOU may not suffer, I would care about my own, as a FXCM USA client. And we don't need you to comment upon it. The docket documents speak for themselves. http://www.cftc.gov/idc/groups/publ.../legalpleading/enfforexcapitalorder020617.pdf
While I can't comment on the CFTC complaint due to the nature of our settlement with them, I can say FXCM continues to stand by the quality of our NDD forex execution. Here's why I brought up the SNB event. The majority of retail forex traders were long EUR/CHF when the Swiss National Bank made their surprise announcement to abandon the 1.2000 exchange rate floor they had established for the pair. Had FXCM been on the other side of client trades, we would have made money when EUR/CHF dropped and retail traders took massive losses on their long positions. The moved wiped out those clients' account equity as well as generated negative equity balances owed to FXCM of over $225 million. The caveat of our NDD model is that traders are offset one for one with a liquidity provider. When a client entered a EUR/CHF trade with FXCM, FXCM Inc. had an identical trade with our liquidity providers. During the historic move, liquidity became extremely scarce and shallow, which affected execution prices. This liquidity issue resulted in some clients having a negative balance. While clients using NDD forex execution did not cover their margin call with us we still had to cover the same margin call with our liquidity providers. As a result, FXCM ended with a regulatory capital shortfall. Accordingly, FXCM needed to get a loan to cover this balance, which we did. For anyone that still thinks FXCM is running an FX dealing desk on our NDD model, the SNB event demonstrated that is not the case. FXCM's NDD price feed currently has 16 liquidity providers which we disclose on our website. Here is the complete list: Bank of America N.A. – Barclays Bank, PLC – BNP Paribas – Nomura International, PLC - Citadel Securities LLC – Citibank N.A. - Morgan Stanley & Co., LLC - UBS AG - Deutsche Bank AG – Goldman Sachs International – KCG Europe Limited – and Commerzbank AG. LPs selected to price retail clients are forced to adhere to an extremely high standard of execution beyond just price – including consistently low rejection rates, low latency, minimum quote sizes and high fill ratios even during market events. We discuss in our UK execution study the criteria we use to rank our liquidity providers which you can see listed in question 13 of the FAQ. FXCM's liquidity providers are ranked based on compliance to these standards which we identify as providing the best customer experience possible. Being a top ranked liquidity provider is important. Liquidity providers with the best pricing according to these rules may gain an advantage over other liquidity providers which could result in a large increase in orders captured. Poorly performing liquidity providers are ranked lower for order flow and ultimately could be removed from our platform until they return to compliance. Also, the results of this study show FXCM UK retail client order prices to be better for FX than futures prices (74.97% of the time) and interbank prices(91.56% of the time).* _________________________________ * The study does not in away way attempt to represent that FXCM maintains a particular capacity or performance level. The figures in this study are provided for information purposes only, and are not intended for trading purposes or advice. FXCM is not liable for any information errors, incompleteness, or delays, or for any actions taken in reliance on information contained herein. Past results are not indicative of future performance. Material Assumptions FXCM's Retail Clients are defined as individual, joint, and corporate accounts trading on our retail price stream. The comparison to each of the Futures and Interbank data is made at the time that the FXCM client order is executed. Normal market slippage and slippage due to rejections by liquidity providers are already included by the time the FXCM client order is executed. However, there is an assumption that there is no slippage on the Futures or Interbank market data. In order to maintain consistency, Futures Market data and Interbank data used the same acceptable ranges in market trades. The summary of findings is based on the assumption that the maximum acceptable difference between the FXCM price and the Interbank/Futures market price is 5 pips in either direction. Fees that a participant would pay on the Futures or Interbank market, such as CME Exchange Fees, NFA Fees, FCM Fees, Clearing Fees, and other commissions, were excluded from the study. Similarly, FXCM Commissions are excluded from the study.