CME, EBS See FX Volume Bounce in February

As was the case with the earlier group of FX platforms to report results, CME Group’s OTC and listed FX businesses saw a nice leap in volumes in February.

CME’s FX futures and options traded just over 1.06 million contracts with a notional value of $87 billion per day. This is up 4.8% from January and up 23% year-on-year. CME says it hit an all-time record for futures average daily open interest with 3.25 million contracts ($297.4 billion notional). This growth, it says,  reflects liquidity and activity in the market and shows that market participants are actually taking and holding positions, using futures to warehouse their risk.

There were also single day volume records in CAD futures on 2 February at $24 billion, as well as a single-day open interest record in BRL futures at $2.7 billion. Options on futures also maintained early year momentum, after January established itself as the busiest month since February 2020, CME says volume rose again in February, although notional data is not provided. Year-on-year FX options of futures volume was up 70% it says.

Ahead of the launch of the much-anticipated Spot+, volumes on FX Link at CME rose strongly, although remain slightly below the 2024 overall average. At $3.6 billion per day in February, FX Link volumes were 12.5% higher than January and up an impressive 75.6% year-on-year.

Over at EBS, meanwhile, the platform is reporting average daily volume of $70.1 billion across spot and NDFs. This is up 5.4% on January and up 55.8% year-on-year following what was, in February 2024, the platform’s lowest volume month since it started reporting data.

Although historically it has been understood that EBS reported spot data only, CME says the February data does include NDF activity and that activity in one-month INR NDFs was, along with G3 pairs, a driver of the volume growth.