FX Volumes Drift Lower in February

The first group of FX platforms to report volume data indicate that activity drifted lower in February after a couple month of heightened activity either side of the new year.

FXSpotStream reports average daily volume (ADV) in all FX products of $72.3 billion, a 1.8% drift from January, but up a healthy 14.9% on a year-on-year basis. Within this, spot volumes were $51.8 billion – again this is lower from January, by 5.4%, but is up on a yar-on-year basis, by 3.3%.

It was a similar picture at 360T, where the platform reports spot FX volumes of $27.6 billion per day in February, down 4.2% from the previous month, but up 8.2% year-on-year. 360T also reports performance metrics which show an average round trip time very much in line with recent months at 6.6ms, with 54% of volume being executed on the New York matching engine. This is the same as January, but is below the average of the last quarter. London handled 33% of volume, also higher than Q4 2023, while Tokyo saw 13% of activity, down from 14% in January.

The lower Tokyo activity was reinforced by data from 360T which indicates that USD/JPY was responsible for 13% of activity, it spent the last three months around the 15% mark, while activity in EUR/USD was unchanged at 26% of volume, with Cable rising to 11% (from 8%) and RMB declining to 6% (from 8%).

Cboe FX also saw a small decline in activity from January, ADV falling by 2.3% to $42.6 billion. Although this is the lowest ADV since August 2023, if Cboe FX sees ADV above $40 billion in March, it will mark the first time in its existence that it has averaged above that mark for a 12-month period.

Firm volume on Cboe FX also dropped slightly, to $15 billion per day from $16 billion making it 35.2% of all volume – the third highest since it started reporting the data. The reduction in firm volume often signifies quieter markets, and this was also reflected in the performance stats from the platform, where the non-firm fill rate rose to 91%, the highest it has been for a year or more and up from 89% in the two recent busy months of January and December.

The average response time on CboeFX was also lower at 9ms that recent averages of 10ms, while the percentage of volume traded anonymously was unchanged at 91%.

Finally, Euronext FX says it handled $23.6 billion per day, a 5.2% decline from January, but up14.6% year-on-year. The platform also publishes performance metrics and these too reflect the quieter nature of markets with fill rates higher across the Skew Safe (84.1% from 82.4%); Full Amount streams (93.8% from 92.8%); as well as on the Platform itself (83.3% from 82.7%).

The average round-trip time also dropped to 7.5ms to New York and 9.7ms to London, down from 8.8ms and 10.5ms respectively in January; 29.1% of the anonymous platform volume was firm.

NDFs Also Lower

The pattern was similar for NDF activity in February, although CboeFX SEF saw a year-on-year decline as well as monthly. The platform says it handled a fraction over $1 billion per day in February, down 15.5% from January and down 2.7% year-on-year – the latter being, incidentally, the first time Cboe FX SEF had broken the $1 billion SDV barrier.

Elsewhere, 24 Exchange also saw a decline, but had its third busiest month ever in ADV terms at $2.47 billion per day. This is down 16.6% from the record month established in January, but is up a massive 65.2% on a year-on-year basis.

Finally, 360T says its NDF volumes were $1.28 billion per day, down 7.9% from January, but up 12.2% year-on-year.