Initial indications are that May 2020 was a fairly good month for FX trading volumes at some of the leading institutional FX venues.

Each of FXSpotStream, Cboe FX and PrimeXM reported a slight increase in average daily FX trading volumes in May versus April. (Integral was down slightly).

We’d note that April saw a big across-the-board decline in FX trading volumes in both the retail and institutional FX world, after record volumes were seen in March at the height of the market chaos surrounding the Covid-19 crisis. Things have very much settled back down to earth since then – at least as far as the markets go.

We should be getting an indication of May retail FX volumes as well over the coming days. Stay tuned to FNG…

PrimeXM May 2020 Highlights

• PrimeXM recorded a total of $884.61 billion in monthly trading volume in May across the 3 major data center locations, which indicates the trading activities have stabilized after market volatility lessened after March.
• The Average Daily Volume (ADV) in May was $42.12 billion compared to ADV of $41.20 billion in April, this represents a slight 1.74% MoM increase.
• The total number of trades in May saw a 10.14% decline from April’s 31.28 million to 28.11 million, taking into consideration the major bank holidays in the UK and US on the last Monday of May.
• 75% of all trading volume was registered in our Data Center located in London LD4, NY4 remains in the second place with $7.7 billion in ADV showing continuous growth from beginning of 2020.
• The most-traded instrument in May was US DJIA index (#US30) with $146.56 billion and demand in XAUUSD has returned as Gold price has climbed to all time high since late 2012.

FXSpotStream

• May-20 total volumes $758.3 billion, or ADV $36.11 billion,+6.3% MoM / +3.5% YoY

Cboe FX

• May-2020 total volumes $658.664 billion, or ADV $31.365 billion, +7.2% MoM

Integral

• May 2020 ADV across Integral platforms totaled $32.6 billion, a decrease of 7.1% compared to April 2020, but an increase of 6.9% YoY