FX Volumes Get Late Month Boost to Start 2022 in Good Style
Posted by Colin Lambert. Last updated: February 2, 2022
After a start to 2022 described by one senior FX platform manager as “pretty awful”, FX spot activity and volumes picked up in the second half of January to provide a solid start to the year.
FXSpotStream, which calculates its volumes across all products, not just spot, reports the third highest average daily volume in its history at $53 billion per day, just short of March 2021, the second busiest. Month-on-month, as to be expected given the usual quiet nature of the market in December, volumes were 23.5%, year-on-year, a more reliable measure, ADV was 8.2% higher.
It was a similar story at Cboe FX, which reports spot FX ADV of $36.6 billion, the highest since March 2021 and up 23.6% from December and 4.6% up on January 2021. The average fill rate on non-firm liquidity was 88.58% at Cboe FX, up from 87.85% in December. Perhaps significantly for a number that previously had dipped as markets got busier, the average fill rate for January was slightly above the 2021 average of 88.51%, and also above those in February and March, both busier months in ADV terms.
Spot volume traded against firm liquidity at Cboe FX was $11.68 billion per day, the second highest reported by the platform (it started reporting this metric at the end of 2019), only surpassed by the chaotic days of March 2020 when the pandemic broke. At just shy of 32% of all volume traded on Cboe FX, firm seems to be taking a stronger position also, the average through 2021 was 29% of activity.
Euronext FX also saw a nice bounce in spot activity in January recording its highest ADV since March 2020 at $22.3 billion per day. This represents a 26% increase from December and a 4.7$ rise year-on-year.
At 360T, the news was more mixed. ADV was $22.7 billion, up 8.6% from December, but down year-on-year, by 8.5%.
There was better news for 360T in NDFs, where the platform had ADV of $864 million in January, the highest in its still nascent reporting history, which started in January 2021. This represents a 9.2% rise from December and is up 30.5% year-on-year.
It was also a positive start to 2022 for Cboe FX’ NDF offering, with SEF ADV of $736 million, the second highest since it started reporting data in January 2020. This is a 15.5% increase from December and is some four and a half times higher than the $158 million per day in January 2021.