NFA Regulated Forex and Futures Brokers by Score

Ten brokers make this ranking, chosen from the 26 that WIKILIX tracks with a clean regulation status and active membership of the National Futures Association. The NFA is the self-regulatory body that oversees futures and retail foreign exchange firms in the United States, working alongside the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Membership is what lets a firm legally offer futures or forex to American customers, so the badge carries real weight. It also gets misread constantly, which is why the order here is the WIKILIX score and nothing else.

What the score orders, and what it leaves out

The WIKILIX score is our own rating of a broker's overall standing, weighted toward its regulatory record and its years in operation. Across these ten it runs from 61.9 at GAIN Capital up to 91.3 at Marex, with a median near 69. It does not measure spreads or execution speed, and this page does not either. Two firms on the list, J V Group and Capital Trading Group, hold NFA membership and no other licence; the other eight answer to at least one more authority, and six of the ten also hold an FCA licence in Britain on top of their US registration.

NFA membership is not a US address

This is where most published lists slip. Only six of these ten firms are actually headquartered in the United States. Marex and ED&F Man are London futures houses, DA International is based in Hong Kong, and J V Group operates out of India. They appear here because they carry a live NFA registration, not because they sit on American soil. If you want firms domiciled in the United States, that is a separate question with a separate answer. If you want firms cleared to face US futures and forex customers, membership of the NFA is the marker that matters, and it stays with the company wherever its head office happens to be.

The list also leaves a lot out on purpose. Fourteen NFA members that score 50 or above carry a WIKILIX status flag, and every one of them was held back. tastytrade and Straits Financial both score in the low 80s, high enough to sit near the top on score alone, yet each carries a flag that keeps it off a list limited to clean-status firms. Only companies recorded with a plain regulation status were eligible for a place.

What to confirm before you open an NFA account

• Look up the firm's NFA ID on the public BASIC register, because a group can hold membership through one entity while the account you open sits with another.
• Read which product the registration covers. A futures commission merchant and a retail forex dealer are registered differently, and only two names here, OANDA and FOREX.com, run a mainstream retail forex desk.
• Weigh the US leverage rule. The NFA caps retail forex at 1:50 on major pairs, so a headline figure such as the 1:1000 recorded for DA International belongs to a non-US entity, not to an American account.
• Match the entity to your country. A British client of FOREX.com contracts with a different regulated company than an American client of the same brand.

Everything above reflects the licences WIKILIX has on record as of today. Confirm any membership on the NFA's own BASIC register before you deposit, because registrations lapse and corporate groups restructure more often than a static list can show.