CLS Hits New Peak in June

Following a string of strong reports from FX trading platforms, CLS has also set a new high for daily settlement since the service started reporting results.

CLS says it settled $2.259 trillion per day in June across all FX products, with FX swaps hitting a new high and outright forwards rebounding close to recent highs helping drive the growth. The overall volume is up 11.7% month-on-month as well as up 9.2% year-on-year, beating the previous high, set in March 2020 at the onset of the pandemic. Unlike that month, however, which was largely driven by a spike in spot volumes, in the latest survey, spot activity, while higher, was only in line with recent peaks and well short of the high-water mark in March 2020.

Average daily volume (ADV) in FX swaps was 1.539 trillion in June, this is up 10.2% from May and up 9.2% year-on-year, while outright forwards ADV was $197 billion, up 20.9% month-on-month and up 7.1% year-on-year. Spot ADV was $523 billion, a 12.7% rise from May and up 9.9% year-on-year.

Earlier this month, CLS reported that settlement volumes were largely unchanged after the North American switch to T+1 settlement in its securities markets, this is reinforced by the volume data, which shows that the service slightly underperformed the non-spot volumes from 360T and FXSpotStream, but was in line, or slightly over, the changes reported by LSEG. In spot terms, the change in activity was also broadly in line with the spot FX platforms, with the exception of EBS, which it outperformed.