Quiet Markets Sees Platform FX Volumes Drop

The first four FX platforms to report FX average daily volume (ADV) data indicate that the quiet month of August translated into lower volumes from July, however year-on-year the picture was slightly more positive.

FXSpotStream reports ADV of $41.4 billion, a 13.6% decline from July, but up, albeit slightly by $200 million per day, from July 2020.

It was a similar picture at CboeFX, which reported ADV of $28.9 billion, a 11.6% drop from July. This marks the first time since August 2020 that CboeFX has handled under $30 billion per day, but does represent, like FXSpotStream, a $200 million per day increase year-on-year.

Firm liquidity at CboeFX also dropped, but in line with the broader data. At $8.1 billion, firm liquidity was the lowest since the first month Cboe reported this data, in December 2019, however as a percentage of overall volume it was steady at over 40% of ECN volume and just over 28% of overall. Firm liquidity ADV fell 10.9% from July and was also down 13.3% year-on-year.

Better news came in the form of fill rates on non-firm liquidity on CboeFX’ venues, in August it hit a new peak of 89.62% – the first time it has been above 89%. This is up from 88.92% in July, and up almost 3% from 86.77% in August 2020.

Elesewhere, reflecting the broad slowdown, 360T spot ADV was $19.1 billion in August, down 11.1% from July and down 10.3% year-on-year. More pertinently, this was the second lowest ADV reported by the platform since July 2018 when it started running data, only April 2020 has been lower at $18.8 billion per day, and it marks the first time since May 2020 that the platform has handled less than $20 billion per day.

Euronext FX was in a similar position, reporting ADV of $15.8 billion, down 13.2% from July and down 16.4% year-on-year. This is the lowest ADV since November 2019 at Euronext FX, which recently signed a deal with Tradefeedr to offer execution quality analytics.