Topping off what was a very good year for FX trading volumes, activity at a number of leading institutional eFX venues dropped by an average of 6% MoM during December 2020.

However that was not at all unexpected – December is usually a slow month when the averages are totaled, with a large number of typically quiet trading days during the second half of the month with much of the financial world on vacation.

Of all the major FX ECNs covered, only Integral posted an increase in volumes during December, and that was by a paltry 1.5%. The others – FXSpotStream, Cboe FX and EuronextFX each saw a decrease in December activity of between 4-13%, despite activity levels being much larger overall than in 2019.

Cboe FX (formerly HotspotFX)

• December 2020 total volumes $686 billion, or ADV $32.69 billion, -13% MoM

EuronextFX (formerly FastMatch)

• December 2020 ADV $19.9 billion, -8% below November’s ADV $21.6 billion.

FXSpotStream

• December ADV of USD42.787billion, an increase of 37.62% YoY vs December ’19 but down 3.86% MoM.
• FXSpotStream’s ADV for all of 2020 of USD42.648billion, is up 18.52% when compared to 2019’s ADV of  USD35.983billion.
• December registers as the eighth month of 2020 with an ADV over USD40billion at FXSpotStream, compared to two in 2019.

Integral

• Average daily volumes (ADV) across Integral platforms totaled $48.5 billion in December 2020. This represents an increase of 1.5 % MoM compared to November 2020, and an increase of 33.6% compared to the same period in 2019.