URL: www.forex.com or www.gaincapital.com

Retail versus Institutional

Gain has made a point to differentiate between its retail and its institutional offering more so than most other FX brokers. Saxobank caters to a wide range of institutional clients, but does so through the same "entity." FXCM has a non-retail offering of sorts, but its name is merely a derivation of FXCM itself: FXCMPro. Gain Capital sets itself apart from Forex.com, its retail broker, in nearly every way. This seems to have allowed it to gain a strong position in the FX managed funds area via its Gain Mac funds:

http://www.forex.com/forex_managed_accounts_disclaimer.html

These funds are one of the few FX managed funds in the industry to provide data on the amount of assets under management, several years worth of real historical returns, and the like. These metrics would be standard for a mutual fund, but in the under-regulated FX world it is difficult to find funds well-established enough to publish such data.

Market Making

Forex.com, Gain's retail offering, is among the largest brokers in the United States and in the top 5 worldwide based on the amount of volume executed on their platform.

As of mid-2007, they continue to operate on a dealing desk model, like GFT Forex. However, as no-deal desk models like that of Oanda and InterbankFX have grown to take a larger percentage of the market, Forex.com's leading position may be threatened. They tout executing over $100 billion in monthly volume via their platform, but continue to claim "guaranteed fills" on stop loss and limit orders, a tactic that once worked well in this market, but no longer carries the same level of credibility it did in 2004 and earlier.

Industry Trends

As United States-based regulators impose tighter standards on the industry, FDMs (forex dealer members) will no longer be able to publicly state that they provide unrealistic market conditions such as guarantees on stops and limits at all times. In a nod to this positive change, Forex.com's website recently began stating that while their platform offers guaranteed fills on these orders, this "does not apply during major fundamental announcements or outside FOREX.com's normal trading hours." The value of guarantees is lost when they are qualified so broadly.