Alpari’s last report of monthly volumes in November 2010 was $160 billion.
Retail FX broker Alpari, which along with FX Club dominates the Russian FX market but also operates worldwide, held a press conference last week in Moscow and released some operating and financial data. The key metrics reviewed include:
- Monthly volumes in 2012 have averaged $84.9 billion
- In Russia alone, Alpari has 53 (!!) offices and 350 employees — mainly involved in running trading schools, Alpari’s main way of attracting new traders in its home country
- Alpari earned $78.8 per million traded in 2012
In our view, it is hard to see how Alpari is making money given its size, number of employees and number of global offices. Smaller firms can certainly make money doing $80B-ish per month, but not global firms with higher costs. Alpari is still licensed in the US, where (as of the end of October) they have parked $29 million of capital, yet have just $16.4 million of client assets.
The last time Alpari released some data was nearly two years ago, saying they were doing $160 billion in monthly volume. Assuming we take both their then and current announcements at face value, that means that Alpari has shrunken (volume-wise) by 47%. Not surprisingly, Alpari recently made some changes in management.
For more on the global Forex industry see the LeapRate-Dow Jones Forex Industry Report.