Commodity contracts dealing
This Canadian industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in buying and selling spot or future contracts, such as commodities, foreign currency or futures options. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A
- Establishments · CanadaA
- 259
- Under 10 employeesA
- 73%
- Establishments · USA
- 814
- Employment · USA
- 9,742
- Payroll · USA
- $4.3B
Size and shape
How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.
Canadian establishments by number of employeesA
Of 259 Canadian establishments with employees, 73% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.
Where they areA
Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
How businesses here compete
The structural profile of subsector 523, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.
Registration is the barrier and the book of clients is the asset. Advisory practices are acquired and rolled up rather than started cold.
- Who sets the price
- Fee compression from passive products.
- The software it runs on
- Portfolio management, trading, post-trade and client reporting.
Market screens and studies
Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.
Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 5231 Securities and commodity contracts intermediation and brokerage covers it.
Software serving this industry
The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.
Sold across the wider branch
And what every business buys · 25 generic categories
Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.
Who works here
The occupations employed in Finance and insurance, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.
Concentrated in this sectorA
These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.
And the jobs every business has
Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. But note the shape of this industry: 73% of establishments have fewer than ten employees, and at that size most of these roles are one person wearing several hats, or bought in from outside.