CME FX Steady Amidst Record Month for Exchange
Posted by Colin Lambert. Last updated: October 3, 2024
While CME Group has reported its busiest ever September across its product suite, things were more subdued in FX, with the futures franchise seeing its regular quarter-end boost and EBS drifting in line with its peers from August, but well-up year-on-year.
CME says the record 28.4 million contracts traded in September was largely driven by records in its interest rate and agricultural products, with ADV of 14.8 million contracts traded in the former.
In FX, CME handled just over 1.28 million contracts in September across its FX futures and options franchise, representing around $115 billion per day in notional terms – the second busiest this year after the June quarter end. This is up 7% from September 2023 and CME says it hit a new monthly record in CNH futures at $457 million, up 118% from last year, it also saw solid growth, on a year-on-year basis, in CHF, AUD and JPY. The four currencies also saw good growth in FX options on futures, with CHF up 230%, CNH +100%, JPY +49% and AUD +27%, although notional volume data was not published.
There was good news for CME’s FX Link, which continues to garner more attention – and volume – ahead of the launch of FX Spot+. Average daily volume on FX Link was $5.75 billion in September, a new peak for the product line, up 7.7% on July, and up 9.6% year-on-year. FX Link is on track to near double its ADV in 2022 and 23, when it handled just over $2 billion per day. Over the first nine months of the 2024 it has handled just shy of $3.9 billion per day.
The CME Group Volatility Index (CVOL) shows that the combined G5 CVOL index averaged 7.6 in Sep 2024, down 7% from full-year 2023. The Merc adds that 2024 is still trending down 15% compared to full year 2023.
EBS, meanwhile, reports ADV of $67.9 billion, down 5.3% from July, when it was clearly boosted by increased activity in two of its core pairs, USD/JPY and USD/CNH, but substantially up by 27.2% year-on-year. This is largely in line with the first group of FX platforms to report spot results earlier this week.
