Spot Volumes Help CLS to Strong February

CLS has reported its FX turnover data for the February, the utility handled $1.982 trillion per day, a 1.7% increase from February 2021 and up 5.5% on January 2022.

Spot volumes stood out, no doubt driven by the late month spike in activity as the Russian invasion of Ukraine commenced, CLS says it handled SDV in notional value of $514 billion in spot. This represents the highest spot ADV since March 2020 and trhe onset of the global pandemic, and is up 13% month-on-month and up 7.3% year-on-year.

FX swap activity was steady at $1.36 trillion, up from $1.355 trillion in February 2021 and from $1.329 trillion January 2022, while outright forward activity was down year-on-year, by 6% to $108 billion, but up 14.9% from January 2022.

The report rounds out a generally strong month for the FX industry in volume terms, earlier in the month 360T completed the platform reporting round by posting overall ADV across all products of EUR 104 billion. Using a constant exchange rate of 1.15, after taking into account the strong rise in spot and NDF volumes at 360T in February, FX swaps turnover is likely to be slightly lower at $81 billion per day, compared to $81.2 billion in January. Year-on-year, however, the story is very positive for 360T’s non-spot business, showing a 21% increase.