While the COVID-19 pandemic continued to march on from 2020 affecting every part of the business and financial world, the Retail FX industry had another fantastic year in 2021 as conditions remained conducive to business.
Financial volatility remained, although somewhat muted as compared to 2020.
More and more retail (and institutional) traders became interested in trading crypto, as well as holding it as a store of value.
Equity markets continued to climb to all-time-highs, accompanied by volatile down-and-back-up swings and led by names very familiar to retail traders (Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Tesla, Netflix…).
People everywhere continued to do more things online.
Interest rates (i.e. what you can get for “safe” investments) remained near zero.
That all added up to record trading volumes, revenues and profits for the Retail FX sector. But, it was somewhat of a haves and have-nots market out there, with some FX and CFD brokers setting activity records month after month, while others were clearly struggling and losing business to more aggressive and better prepared competitors.
Our Top FX industry news stories of 2021 are a combination of one-off stories, as well as themes which emerged during the year through various articles and discussions here on FNG.
Which stories and themes made the cut?
What was the most-read story about a Retail FX broker on FNG in 2021?
Which FX brokers broke records in 2021, and which ones declined?
What was the M&A deal-of-the-year in the Retail FX sector?
Which FX industry CEOs “changed teams” in 2021?
Before we begin, we here at FNG would like to take this opportunity to wish all our readers happy holidays, and a safe and prosperous 2022. We appreciate you all making us the most-read forex industry news site in 2021 as we broke virtually every news story in the sector that mattered – and we will continue to take that responsibility very seriously into 2022. Hope to meet you all in person as well as online in the new year!
FNG’s Top FX industry news stories of 2021
1. eToro’s IPO (or rather, SPAC merger) at a $10B valuation…. or not
To lead off our list, we’ll say that the most-read article on FNG in 2021 about a Retail FX broker was actually a small series of articles about eToro’s plans to go public. Starting in mid March 2021, with our exclusive coverage revealing eToro’s plans to go public via a merger with an already-public special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC) in a deal that would value eToro at about $10 billion, through to another FNG exclusive that the eToro deal was being postponed to Q4 and then again into 2022, all eyes in the Retail FX world have clearly been on eToro.
And the reason is easy to comprehend. Should eToro succeed, a number of other brokers would certainly like to look at a public markets exit as well.
In our most recent article from mid December, we point out that the eToro IPO plan being delayed into 2022 is presenting some issues, which may impact whether or not eToro can go public as planned – or anywhere near its hoped-for $10 billion valuation.
2. Robinhood soars to an IPO, but then falls flat
Robinhood share price since IPO. Source: Google Finance.