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The Swiss central bank’s surprise decision to remove the cap on its currency has incited investor fears that a spate of bank and fund losses could lead to a sustained bout of market turmoil beyond the ability of central banks to ride yet again to the rescue.

The Swiss franc soared against the euro, which tumbled in value against the dollar after the move by the central bank on Thursday. The yen pushed upward, emerging market currencies gyrated and the price of oil rose sharply, reversing its recent fall.

The last few days have been a time of “volatile volatility,” to use the words of a top Citigroup executive — trader jargon for a series of sharp, disorienting moves in stocks, currencies and bonds that can ultimately lead to market-rattling events like the collapse of a major bank or investor.

This was the explanation used by FXCM, one of the largest foreign exchange trading platforms for individual investors in the United States, when it said on Thursday that “unprecedented volatility” after the Swiss franc’s surge against the euro had led to $225 million in customer losses that might put it in breach of capital requirements. On Friday, the company announced that it would receive a $300 million loan from the parent company of the investment bank Jefferies to allow it to keep operating.

There were other casualties in the currency markets, including several small brokerage firms in Britain and New Zealand.

The question now is whether the much larger players in the $5 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market, global banks like Barclays, Deutsche Bank and others, might have been caught short in significant ways.

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Citigroup sustained more than $150 million in losses on its currency trading desks in the turmoil after the Swiss move, a person with knowledge of the matter said on Friday.

The possibility of a big bank suffering a crippling blow as a result of the recent market gyrations appears remote. Yet the losses by big and small players is troubling to market participants because they were instigated by none other than a central bank.

For investors who have taken on increasing amounts of risk in the belief that the aggressive actions of the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and others would always bail them out, this comes as a rude shock.

One sales trader at a large European bank said that at a dinner of large investors Thursday night, he had never seen such a “stunned look” on the faces of his clients as they tried to come to terms with the Swiss central bank’s move.

“You could really feel the hurt out there,” said this person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to publicly discuss his clients’ fluctuating moods.

The only thing that gave these investors — some of the largest in the world — hope is the belief that this action by the Swiss central bank would put even more pressure on Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, to deliver on a widespread expectation that the E.C.B. will buy eurozone government bonds in bulk.

“We have had this long period in which quantitative easing and zero interest rates have squeezed volatility out of the system,” said Kit Juckes, a foreign exchange strategist at the French bank Société Générale. “Now when you release it, it does not come out smoothly or predictably. This can eat away at investor confidence.”

This is why FXCM absorbed large losses along with its clients and why it said Thursday evening that it might be in breach of its regulatory capital requirements. The Swiss central bank had long said it was committed to buying euros and selling francs, so hedge funds and many others followed blindly in its wake — to their detriment.

FXCM was a small player on Wall Street, but its troubles could hit a handful of larger banks that had lent to the firm. A public filing by FXCM in August last year said that the company could borrow up to $150 million from Bank of America, Capital One, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Barclays and Bank Hapoalim, which is based in Israel. At the end of September, FXCM had borrowed only $30 million under the loan facility, according to another recent securities filing. FXCM has not borrowed more than that since, according to people at two banks with knowledge of the loan who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The $300 million loan from the Jefferies parent, Leucadia National, may help ease any cash flow problems at FXCM. But the Leucadia loan may give limited comfort to FXCM’s other creditors. Leucadia said that its loan was “senior” and “secured,” which means that Leucadia may have priority over other lenders and that it has the right to assume ownership of FXCM’s assets if it does not pay back the loan.

Other small brokers ran into trouble.

Alpari UK, a foreign currency broker in Britain, said on Friday that it had entered insolvency as a majority of its clients sustained losses in excess of their account equity. “Where a client cannot cover this loss, it is passed on to us,” the firm said in a statement on its website.

The broker sponsors the English professional soccer team West Ham United and is featured prominently on the team’s jerseys. It is an independent entity within the association of the Alpari companies, which include affiliates in Japan, Russia, the United States and other parts of the world, according to the company’s website.

In New Zealand, Global Brokers NZ, another online foreign exchange broker, said it was shutting down.

“The dramatic move on the Swiss franc fueled by the Swiss National Bank’s unexpected policy reversal of capping the Swiss franc against the euro has resulted in rare volatility and illiquidity,” David Johnson, the director of the company, said in a statement posted online on Thursday.

Some foreign exchange brokers did better in the face of the tumult.

Oanda, a large online currency trading specialist based in Toronto, said that because of its strong capital position, the firm was able to forgive the losses that some of its clients incurred.

“Some of our clients went negative,” said Ed Eger, the chief executive of Oanda. “But we decided to forgive them and bring their balances back to zero — even though we suffered losses.”

Reporting was contributed by Chad Bray, Peter Eavis, Michael Corkery, David Jolly and Jack Ewing.