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If you want to track PLUS's activity in the US futures market through Cunningham Commodities, this is the way to do it:
https://www.cftc.gov/MarketReports/financialfcmdata/index.htm
As I understand it, "Customers' Assets in Seg" = margin or capital held on behalf of clients, which is a precondition to trading activity.
The growth in assets is lumpy. Cunningham's customer assets grew 23% in July last year and almost 40% in the second half, but only 5% in Q4.
For the full year, Dec 2022 to Dec 2023, customer assets grew 75%.
The lumpiness doesn't matter in my view, as long as the trajectory is positive and upwards.
Cunningham are a tiny player, with around 0.13% market share of customer assets.
This suggests to me that Cunningham alone could become a revenue and profit driver for PLUS. The US contributed 5-10% of revenues last year, of which most was Cunningham. If their technology is so very revolutionary, which they claim it is, PLUS will grow this business by multiples.
Thanks SeaTank, very interesting.
Downloads of plus 500 app is getting big from the US. in the last 30 days there have been over 50,000 downloads from the US, thats 18% of the total downloads in the last 30 days. It must be starting to get material.
@seaTank. delving a bit deeper and im a bit confused. at the end of december 2023 the CFTC data report shows customer assets in segregated account of $369m
whereas in the preliminary results for 2023 note 7 shows "Segregated client funds" of $249.6m. The preliminary results of course show the figure for all (including non US) segregated funds. so you'd expect this to be alot higher than the CFTC data. any ideas?
Good spot ggplyr
Segregation of Customer Funds: https://www.cftc.gov/IndustryOversight/Intermediaries/FCMs/fcmsegregationfunds.html#:~:text=Segregated%20accounts%20must%20be%20titled,the%20event%20of%20FCM%20insolvency.
As I understand it, assets/margin on futures instruments are not on PLUS500's balance sheet, so do not appear in their accounts
Where do you go to find data on App downloads?
I don't quite follow it, but while it's not on the balance sheet it is in the accounts as an in and an out on note 7.
Google appmagic for downloads. No idea if it's any good or accurate mind. Just found it the other day.
Their accounts show customer margin/deposits of their CFD businesses in Europe and elsewhere, which is on-balance sheet. They are the counter party to the customer's positions, I believe. I don't know how the Cunningham futures business works but presume that customer positions are held in custody accounts along with customer deposits and are not on-balance sheet. The revolution PLUS brings to this market is the real time data and trading interface, as well as ability to tighten spreads for the customer and margin offsets if the customer has multiple positions in opposite directions, as they are a full clearing member of the exchange.
It is of course much lower margin business, so the customer deposit size in the US as per the spreadsheet generates around ~10% of the revenue the retail CFD business does.
I think I might be halfway to understanding how the US business works, frankly, but I am quite sure the data from CFTC is legitimate and telling.
Trying to piece it all together.
This is the stats for the download for the US app, "Trade & Invest". which is the us futures platform
https://appmagic.rocks/google-play/plus500-trade-and-invest/com.plus500.futures
it shows in the last 30 days its had over 50k downloads from the US. thats half of the all the downloads in the most recent month since it launched A few months ago, that sound like its growing very fast. not all downloads result in a revenue generating customer of course.
App downloads data is a nice find!
Can we infer much from the number of US downloads & what it means for revenue and profit? according to Appmagic there have been over 200k since the US app launched, still over 50k in last 30 years. The buckets are quite large on app magic, it seems to be >5k, > 10k, >20k, >50k, >100k, >200k etc so difficult to get exact numbers out of it.
The fees Plus earn for the futures are a commission fee of $0.49 per Micro contract and $0.89 per Standard contract (per side). So as Seatank points out its low margins as Plus are just the middle man for the futures rather than taking a side like they do in the CFD business