NY Fed Semi Annual Volume Survey shows some interesting data

The Foreign Exchange Committee launched its inaugural Survey of North American Foreign Exchange Volume in October 2004 in order to provide the market with frequent information on the size and structure of foreign exchange activity in North America.

Below are the results of the October 2009 semi annual survey.

While the bottom line isn't surprising as the survey was conducted while the crisis was pretty much still at large there are some interesting results we can see there. In general, the Forex trading volume was down 10% and by as much as 20% in certain segments. But what's amazing to see is that the swap transactions were actually up by more than 10% and represented the only segment of the market which didn't plummet. You can also see that OTC Forex Options represent less than 4% of the total traded volume. This confirms what I've been saying all along - options and binaries are a tiny segment of the Forex market, at least for now.