US retail-FX active accounts fell 9.3% across three major disclosures in six months

Three of the largest public US retail-forex disclosures show a market with fewer active accounts but no decisive improvement in customer outcomes. OANDA Corporation, tastyfx and GAIN Capital Group, the legal entity behind FOREX.com US, reported 92,111 non-discretionary retail-forex accounts in total for the fourth quarter of 2025. By the second quarter of 2026 the comparable total had fallen to 83,584. That is a reduction of 8,527 accounts, or 9.26%, in six months. The firms publish the figures separately because federal rules require quarterly performance disclosures; the combined series is FXBrokers.ai’s calculation.[1][2][3][5][6]

The contraction occurred at all three firms. OANDA’s reported count fell from 44,369 in the fourth quarter of 2025 to 39,992 in the second quarter of 2026, a decrease of 4,377, or 9.86%. FOREX.com’s fell from 38,886 to 34,791, down 4,095, or 10.53%. Tastyfx moved from 8,856 to 8,801, a comparatively small decline of 55, or 0.62%, after reaching 9,290 in the first quarter. The figures describe accounts carried during each quarter. They do not identify how many unique people were represented, how many accounts were funded, or why an account ceased to appear.[1][2][3]

A regulated disclosure, not a marketing survey

The performance percentages are produced under a prescribed federal method. For each non-discretionary retail-forex account open for any period during the quarter, the counterparty must combine realised and unrealised gains and losses on retail-forex transactions, subtract fees, commissions and other charges, and add interest, income or rebates credited to the account. Deposits and withdrawals are excluded from the profitability test. A positive result is profitable; zero or a negative result is not profitable. This is materially more disciplined than asking customers whether they believe they made money.[4]

The rule also explains what the percentage does not measure. It gives every account one outcome regardless of size. An account that gained one dollar and an account that gained $100,000 are both counted as profitable; an account down one dollar and one down $100,000 are both counted as not profitable. The public percentage therefore cannot reveal total customer profit or loss, the average loss, median return, leverage, holding period or the distribution of outcomes. It is an account-incidence measure, not a measure of dollars transferred between customers and firms.[4][5]

The disclosure is nevertheless unusually valuable because it is repeated on the same regulatory timetable. CFTC Regulation 5.5 requires the most recent four quarters to accompany the retail-forex risk statement, while the NFA requires the corresponding quarterly report within 17 business days after quarter-end. That creates a rolling public record which can be compared across time, provided the reader keeps the calculation and entity identity constant.[5][6]

The combined profitability rate stayed close to one account in three

Weighting each firm’s published percentage by its disclosed account count produces a combined profitable-account estimate of 32.83% for the fourth quarter of 2025, 31.74% for the first quarter of 2026 and 33.47% for the second quarter. The corresponding not-profitable estimates are 67.17%, 68.26% and 66.53%. Because firms publish rounded percentages, these weighted figures are also estimates rather than exact reconstructed account counts. They show that the nine-percent decline in the account base was not accompanied by a break from the long-standing pattern in which roughly two accounts out of three finish a quarter without a positive net result.[1][2][3][4]

The third-quarter disclosures available from OANDA and tastyfx point in the same direction, while FOREX.com’s page had not yet added a third-quarter row when checked for this investigation. OANDA reported 37,607 accounts and 34.33% profitable; tastyfx reported 8,342 and 38.53% profitable. Together that is 45,949 accounts and a count-weighted estimated profitable rate of 35.09%, leaving 64.91% not profitable. This two-firm calculation should not be compared as though it were the same market sample as the three-firm totals.[1][2][3]

OANDA’s full sequence was 44,369 accounts in the fourth quarter of 2025, 44,118 in the first quarter of 2026, 39,992 in the second and 37,607 in the third. From the first to the last observation, the decline was 6,762 accounts, or 15.24%. Its profitability percentage moved from 32.78% to 31.74%, then 34.04% and 34.33%. The account base contracted substantially while the outcome ratio stayed within a range of 2.59 percentage points.[1]

Tastyfx reported 8,856, 9,290, 8,801 and 8,342 accounts over the same four quarters. Its profitable percentages were 37.93%, 35.19%, 34.50% and 38.53%. The account count ended 5.80% below its fourth-quarter level, while the final profitable share was 0.60 percentage points higher. That does not mean remaining customers became more skilled: changes in the account population, market conditions and the timing of open positions can all move the quarterly ratio.[2][4]

FOREX.com reported 40,232 accounts in the third quarter of 2025, 38,886 in the fourth quarter, 38,585 in the first quarter of 2026 and 34,791 in the second. Its profitable percentages were 34.25%, 31.72%, 30.91% and 32.56%. Between the fourth quarter and the second quarter, the account count fell by 10.53% while the profitable share rose by 0.84 percentage points. Again, a modest change in the share of accounts above zero should not be converted into a claim about the amount customers gained or lost.[3][4]

The weighted figures change the interpretation

A simple average of the three firms’ profitability percentages would give each company equal influence regardless of whether it carried 8,000 accounts or 44,000. The count-weighted method used here instead multiplies each published percentage by its reported account count and divides the estimated profitable-account total by the combined count. For the second quarter, that produces about 27,979 profitable-account equivalents out of 83,584, or 33.47%. Because the input percentages are rounded to two decimal places, the implied count should not be presented as an exact tally of 27,979 named accounts.[1][2][3]

The weighting also shows why a headline based on the highest individual percentage would be misleading. Tastyfx’s 34.50% profitable rate in the second quarter applied to 8,801 accounts, while OANDA’s 34.04% applied to 39,992 and FOREX.com’s 32.56% to 34,791. The two larger populations dominate the combined result. Conversely, a rapid improvement or deterioration at a smaller firm can be important for its customers without materially changing a market-wide estimate.[1][2][3]

Break-even accounts also sit on the not-profitable side of the federal formula. That choice prevents a zero result from being described as a trading success, but it means the published not-profitable percentage combines accounts that lost materially with accounts that merely failed to finish above zero after charges and credits. Without the underlying return distribution, no one can tell how much of the two-thirds figure reflects small negative outcomes and how much reflects severe losses. The disclosure is strong on incidence and weak on severity.[4]

What can—and cannot—explain the decline

The public disclosures do not disclose openings, closures, dormant-account policies, acquisitions, transfers, geographic eligibility or product migrations. A lower quarter-end disclosure could reflect customers closing accounts, failing to trade, being reclassified, moving to another product or entity, or no longer meeting the firm’s reporting interpretation. It could also reflect industry-wide demand. Because all three firms declined over the six-month common window, a shared market factor is plausible, but the data do not establish one.[1][2][3][4]

The labels on the firms’ pages also deserve attention. OANDA’s table says “total number of accounts”; tastyfx and FOREX.com describe active non-discretionary trading accounts. The governing calculation concerns non-discretionary retail-forex customer accounts open for any period during the quarter, excluding proprietary accounts. The underlying regulatory definition improves comparability, but it does not give an outside reader each firm’s operational account-status rules. The most defensible comparison is therefore the published regulatory series itself, not a wider claim about monthly active users.[1][2][3][4]

Nor should the decline be interpreted as evidence that retail forex is disappearing from the United States. The analysis covers three prominent counterparties, not every possible account or adjacent product. It excludes exchange-traded currency futures, institutional foreign exchange, offshore entities serving non-US clients and products such as options or contracts for difference that are not offered under the same US retail-forex framework. It also does not measure balances: a smaller number of accounts could hold the same, more or less money.[1][2][3][5]

The customer-protection message is more precise than 'most traders lose'

The most defensible consumer conclusion is not that every individual has a two-thirds probability of losing forever. The disclosures show that, in each measured quarter, roughly two-thirds of the included accounts had a zero or negative net result after the rule’s adjustments. An individual can appear in several quarters, can move between profitable and not profitable, and may hold more than one account. A quarterly account incidence is not a lifetime success rate or an actuarial probability for a new customer.[4][5]

Still, the persistence is economically important. Across the three-firm common sample, the weighted not-profitable rate remained between 66.53% and 68.26% while more than 8,500 accounts disappeared from the count. A shrinking denominator did not produce a markedly different outcome distribution. For firms, that raises questions about retention, education and whether product design or customer selection changes the pattern. For customers, it is a reminder that leverage, transaction costs and mark-to-market losses are incorporated into the regulatory test rather than left outside a promotional win-rate statistic.[1][2][3][4]

A disclosure that could become far more useful

The next analytical step would be to publish reconciliations. Firms could show how many accounts entered and left the quarterly population, how many were funded, the median net return, the distribution of losses, and separate results by experience or leverage band without exposing personal data. Regulators could standardise a machine-readable quarterly file across all retail-forex counterparties. None of those additions is required for the calculation made here, but they would help distinguish customer attrition from administrative changes and small losses from catastrophic ones.[4][5][6]

What the existing records establish is already significant. A six-month contraction of 9.26% occurred across three major disclosed account bases, and a further third-quarter fall was visible at the two firms that had published. Yet the percentage of accounts ending above zero stayed close to one in three. The US retail-forex market changed size more clearly than it changed its customer-outcome pattern.[1][2][3]

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