Mixed Fortunes for Exchange-Owned FX Businesses in October

October was very much a mixed bag for exchange-owned FX businesses, with Singapore Exchange seeing the benefit of central bank action, while activity at CME, Deutsche Börse and LSEG fell back.

There was good news for CME from its OTC business, EBS, which saw average daily volume (ADV) in spot and NDFs rise slightly to $59.7 billion per day. This is up 2.5% from September and up 2.9% year-on-year. Although it does not provide hard numbers, CME says EBS’ spot metals business hit an all-time high, including three of the platform’s busiest days ever including record days for gold on October 17, and silver on October 9).

In contrast, CME’s FX futures and options franchise suffered a year-on-year drift of 5.5% to $68 billion in notional value – the third lowest this year. There was some good news in a 17% increase in JPY volume from October 2024 (to $13.5 billion), CHF, BRL and INR also received a healthy boost. FX options on futures volume was up 8% year-on-year, led by JPY and CAD.

FX Link, meanwhile, saw ADV of $4.5 billion, up 12.5% on September, but down 9.5% on October 2024, which was the mechanism’s fourth busiest month to date.

It was a similar picture at LSEG FX, where spot ADV drifted to $97 billion per day across the firm’s platforms, down 4% on September and down 1%year-on-year. It marks only the third time this year LSEG FX has been under the $100 billion mark. Non-spot FX volumes also dropped at LSEG, at $423 billion they are largely in line with the year’s average but are down 8.4% on September. They are, however, up 6% year-on-year.

There was a similar pattern at Deutsche Börse’s 360T which reports total FX ADV of EUR 172.5 billion, down 7.2% from September, but up a healthy 20.8% year-on-year. Earlier in the month, The Full FX reported slightly lower month-on-month volumes in spot and NDFs, using a fixed exchange rate, non-spot ADV at 360T is estimated to have dropped 8.1% from September, but risen 21.2% year-on-year.

Finally, helped by intervention during the month from the Reserve Bank of India, Singapore Exchange (SGX) reports a 7.2% increase in FX futures and options volumes on a daily basis. SGX handled an average of just over 306,000 contracts per day, which is 32.3% higher than the same month last year.

While CNH remains the largest FX contract at SGX, activity drifted by 1.1% month-on-month to 148,648 contracts per day, this is up 5% year-on-year. The aforementioned central bank intervention in the INR, however, saw INR futures on SGX soar by 14.75% from September to 127,826 contracts, a 60% increase on October 2024.