Apparently, no where. In looking at the latest financial data for futures commission merchants that must be filed on a monthly basis, it seemed the amount in overall customer seg funds had dropped about $5 billion from the previous month (June data filed by July 31). But an inside the numbers look shows some surprises: A year ago, the total customer seg funds was a whopping $169 billion for the same period verses $138 billion in 2009. That certainly shows erosion in customer funds, which can be a rough gauge of customers in the market. But to give more perspective, for the same period in 2007, total customer seg funds were $115 billion, while a year earlier they were $106 billion. The summer months typically show a dip, and this year was no exception. Where were FCMs last fall when markets and companies were going off the charts? November 2008 had total seg funds of $166 billion. Overall all, discounting a few billion here and and a few billion there, the industry still has grown dramatically over the past couple years, at least according to the financial data filed into the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
