CLS August Volumes Down on July, Up Y-o-Y
Posted by Colin Lambert. Last updated: September 22, 2021
CLS Group says it handled average notional FX trading volumes of $1.679 trillion in August, a 3.8% decline from July, but up 1.5% year-on-year.
Activity declined across all three product sets, although in FX swaps ADV settled was $1.233 trillion, a less than one percent decline from July. Year-on-Year, FX swaps volume was up 3.6%. The decline was starker in spot, with ADV of $367 billion, a 12.6% drop from July. This largely reflects the data earlier this month from various FX trading platforms, which was followed by slightly larger decline at EBS and a smaller decline at Refinitiv.
Year-on-year, spot volumes on CLS are also down, by 5.2%, a number that probably reflects the overall position in the market given how those platforms to report had varying year-on-year fortunes, from down 22% to up 8%. Outright forwards volume on CLS in August was $79 billion per day, down 5.9% from July but up fractionally, by 1.3% from August 2020.
CLS’ data is adjusted to equate to the same reporting convention used by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the foreign exchange committees’ semi-annual FX volume surveys. These surveys only report one side of any trade, and only one of the four legs of FX swap trades, to avoid double counting.