Institutional FX trading volumes drop 14% in April 2023 as volatility wanes
Following a strong March and overall very active Q1 for leading institutional eFX venues, trading activity saw a double-digit-percent drop across the board in the sector to begin Q2, in April 2023. Following three months of fairly wild up-and-down action in both the currency and equity markets, April saw much more muted volatility with leading equity indices and currency pairs trading in a fairly narrow range – leading to lower trading volumes.
Overall, institutional FX trading volumes fell by 14% MoM in April 2023, following three consecutive months of volume increases to begin the year. Each of the leading institutional FX houses reported significant drops in volumes of between 9-18% during April including FXSpotStream, EuronextFX, Deutsche Borse’s 360T, and Cboe FX.
We would note that April’s volumes include Good Friday (April 7) which was officially a trading day but had naturally very little activity, which brought down April’s averages a little. However even without that anomaly trading was still well-off from the previous three months, as noted.
Cboe FX (formerly HotspotFX)
- April 2023 average daily volumes were $39.661 billion, -18.0% from March’s $48.352 billion.
EuronextFX (formerly FastMatch)
- April 2023 ADV $19.69 billion, -13.1% from March’s ADV of $22.66 billion.
FXSpotStream
- FXSpotStream’s ADV MoM (April‘23 vs March’23) decreased 17.17% to USD55.305billion.
- FXSpotStream’s ADV YoY (April’23 vs April‘22) decreased 9.71%.
- FXSpotStream’s ADV YTD (Jan-Apr’23) is USD661.546billion, a decrease of 0.81% compared to the same period last year.
360T
- Average daily volumes (ADV) at 360T came in at $25.351 billion in April 2023, down 9.2% from March’s $27.918 billion.