The LSE Directory / Data providers
FXCM is a retail and institutional foreign exchange (FX) and CFD broker operating today as Stratos Markets Limited, authorised and regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (registration 217689) and headquartered at 110 Bishopsgate, London. Beyond its retail platforms, Trading Station, TradingView integration and MetaTrader 4, it gives algorithmic and automated traders free access to its own trading infrastructure through three proprietary APIs, FIX, Java and ForexConnect (available for C++, C#, VB and Python), which stream live prices, place and manage orders, download historical rates and pull account reports directly from FXCM's servers. Its institutional arm, FXCM Pro, is not a neutral market data vendor but a supplier of FXCM's own liquidity and price feeds, which sets it apart from firms reselling a consolidated exchange tape. FXCM Pro offers wholesale execution with ticket sizes from 1,000 units and no additional markup, plus a prime brokerage service that clears trades across third party venues, Currenex, EBS, FastMatch, Hotspot, Integral OCX and SpotEX, earning only pre-agreed clearing fees rather than marking up those venues' prices. Its proprietary Speculative Sentiment Index (SSI), a ratio of retail buyers to sellers per instrument published since 2009 and used as a contrarian indicator, is bundled into the same offering. Target clients are high-frequency trading firms, small and mid sized hedge funds, proprietary trading firms and emerging market banks, typically expected to hold an account balance above $250,000; data and API access are tied to holding an FXCM account rather than sold as a standalone subscription. The company was founded in New York in 1999 by Dror ("Drew") Niv and William Ahdout, initially under the name Shalish Capital Markets before adopting FXCM within its first year. It listed on the NYSE in December 2010, raising $211 million, and grew into one of the largest retail FX brokers by client count. The January 2015 Swiss franc shock cost the firm roughly $225 million and breached its regulatory capital requirements, met with a $300 million rescue loan from Leucadia National, later renamed Jefferies Financial Group. In February 2017 the CFTC and NFA fined FXCM and its founding partners $7 million after finding that FXCM's "No Dealing Desk" platform, marketed as free of conflicts of interest, secretly routed trades through an affiliated market maker that collected about $77 million in rebates between 2010 and 2014, roughly 70 percent of FXCM's trading revenue in that period; the firm was permanently barred from operating in the United States, sold its US client accounts to Gain Capital, and its listed parent was renamed Global Brokerage, Inc. Jefferies foreclosed on its outstanding loan in September 2023, taking full ownership after Global Brokerage's bankruptcy, and consolidated the business as Stratos Group International, with the UK entity renamed Stratos Markets Limited; the FXCM brand now operates under FCA (UK), CySEC (Cyprus), ASIC (Australia), FSCA (South Africa) and Israeli Securities Authority licenses. In May 2026, trade press reported that Jefferies was exploring a sale of Stratos, the holding company behind both the FXCM and Tradu brands, after the UK entity posted losses exceeding $2 million in both 2023 and 2024 on turnover of roughly $103,000; a prospective buyer was described as possibly coming from outside the industry, such as a crypto exchange, though as of that report neither company had confirmed a transaction.
