Opinion piece by Richard Strait | Strait, LLC Over the past 7-10 years the FCM community has contracted exponentially to just a handful of providers. While many reasons for this can be cited, those that stand out are the increased costs of the regulatory compliance and increased capital requirements, coupled with skyrocketing regulatory haircuts levied on that capital and lower revenues. While the electronic market place has increased the cost efficiency of the Exchanges and their member firms, Capital “haircuts” on customer segregated funds alone may reach 10% in the near future while only five years ago they were as…