FX Volumes Lower in May

After two months of heightened activity, the first group of FX platforms to report data for May indicate that trading volumes have come off the high, but remain comfortably up on a year-on-year basis.

360T reports average daily volume (ADV) in spot FX of $26.3 billion, an 11.7% decline from April, but up 1.9% year-on-year. It is the lowest activity level in spot for the platform since August 2023, following its second and third busiest months in history. In terms of performance, the average round-trip time (RTT) was just over 7ms, and New York continues to be the dominant matching engine with 56% of volume traded there, down 2% from April. London saw 31% of business, up 2%, while Tokyo handled the balance.

Although there was heightened activity in yen at the start of the month as the Bank of Japan intervened for a second time, USD/JPY activity dropped to 11% of volume, from 14% in April, while EUR/USD remained the busiest pair at 24%. Cable saw increased activity at 10% (from 8%).

FXSpotStream also saw activity drift lower, although May was still the second busiest in the platform’s history at $86.4 billion per day – up 55.7% year-on-year. Of this spot ADV was $62.4 billion – also the second busiest for FXSpotStream – a drop of 5.6% from April, but up 41.5% from May 2023.

Cboe FX reports spot ADV of $42.2 billion, the lowest since August 2023 and down 15.6% from April. Again though, on a year-on-year basis, activity is higher, by 3.4%. Firm volume on Cboe FX dropped from $15 billion to $13 billion per day – roughly unchanged year-on-year. The average response time was 9ms, 91% of volume was anonymous (down from 92% in April), and the non-firm fill rate rose slightly by 1% to 91%.

Meanwhile, Euronext FX reports spot ADV of $25.8 billion, down 10.1% from April, but up 20% year-on-year. The average RTT to New York was 10.6ms and to London 9.2ms, while the firm percentage on the anonymous platform was 29.3%. the fill rates for the Skew Safe stream was 82% (down from 83.1%), while it was 94.9% on the Full Amount stream (94.4%) and 81% on the platform (81.4%).

360T Hits New NDF High

While two of the three platforms to report NDF volumes saw a decline in activity from April, all were healthily up year-on-year, and 360T hit a new peak at $1.746 billion. This is up by 6.4% from April, as well as up 43.6% year-on-year, and surpasses the previous peak set in March 2023.

Elsewhere, 24 Exchange, after two successive months above $3 billion per day, saw ADV drift back below that threshold to $2.7 billion. This is a 14.2% decline from April, but still the fourth busiest in the platform’s history, and is up a very healthy 80.2% year-on-year.

Finally on NDFs, the Cboe FX SEF reports ADV of $1.14 billion, an 11.1% drop from April, but up 20% from May 2023.