About FXCM

The new way to access a 24-hour forex market

In the late 1990s, a massive group of eager investors (people like you) wanted to trade forex, but easy access to the market simply wasn't there. We started FXCM in 1999 convinced that a unique online trading experience would allow the public, now armed with home computers and the internet, to do something extraordinary: trade the global currency market 24 hours a day.

By the end of our first year, we were trading $250 million a month—small compared to the massive $435 billion now, but a huge achievement for a new industry.

BUILDING A GLOBAL COMMUNITY

By nature, foreign exchange is global, so that's where we went. We first expanded outside the US with our London office. Soon, we opened offices in Paris, Sydney, Milan, Berlin, Tel-Aviv, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Toronto, Athens and other major economic capitals around the world.

REIMAGINING THE TRADITIONAL MODEL

We wanted to overturn the traditional forex model of dealers directly profiting from client losses. Direct market access, we feel, is the fairest possible trading, which came to light when we introduced No Dealing Desk forex execution. NDD is the ideal parallel of interests—ours and our clients. Our clients trade on transparent buy and sell quotes streamed from multiple price providers 24 hours a day, five days a week.

Thanks to an outstanding client reaction to NDD, in November, we met a personal goal: We passed 100,000 accounts.

CRISIS AVERTED

When the 2008 financial crisis hit, thanks to our business model, FXCM was never in a dangerous position; in fact, we were thriving, with no debt, substantial cash holdings and an increasing client base. By 2010, we saw the true, fragile nature of many of our competitors and many forex traders became concerned about the safety of their funds. Our strong economic position allowed us to acquire multiple brokerages to enhance our capabilities and market share.

THE MOVE BEYOND FOREX

Knowing the size and scope of FXCM's resources, our clients turned to us to unify their investments. They wanted to trade forex alongside oil, gold and stock indices. We expanded our offering to include CFDs and our international offices began offering these special products to meet the demand for a multi-asset platform to diversify their investments.

NEW WAYS TO SIMPLIFY TRADING

As our clients become better traders, they develop new ideas for strategies. Our development team codes these EAs, indicators and scripts to meet the demand for automation. We launched the FXCM Apps store to offer these useful trading apps, many of which are free, to traders of any experience level.

THE MOVE BEYOND RETAIL

As an increased number of financial institutions started coming to us for our institutional trading solutions for their businesses, we knew the time was right to expand our institutional offering: We developed a broad suite of platforms customizable to the specific needs of our business clients.

NO DEALING DESK: THE NEXT EVOLUTION

The market was ripe for a change. We changed our business model, bringing in our new spreads-plus-commission model as well as Mini accounts for the smaller trader.