GAIN Capital let people trade the world's currencies from a home computer, with borrowed money, around the clock. Through FOREX.com and other platforms, customers bet on dollars, euros and yen with low minimums. By late 2010, retail forex was a fast-growing corner of finance that few people understood. New American rules were just starting to cap leverage and tighten oversight. GAIN was one of the largest brokers in the field.

A Trading Floor, Repackaged

Mark Galant founded GAIN in 1999 with a simple idea. The professional foreign exchange market could be packaged for individuals online. GAIN took the other side of many customer trades and earned money from the spread between buying and selling prices. Retail forex was young and loosely regulated. GAIN grew in the United States, then expanded into the United Kingdom, Japan and other markets.

A Decade Under $9

GAIN priced its IPO at $9 a share in December 2010 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange. To grow, it bought rivals including GFT and City Index. Tighter regulation and calm currency markets weighed on the business. Its shares spent most of the next decade below the offering price. In 2020 INTL FCStone bought GAIN and renamed itself StoneX.

Cover: Merchant Ships, Reinier Nooms, called Zeeman. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for merchant ships (trade between nations).