CME Group April Average Daily FX Volumes Drop 34% to $68 Billion Month-Over-Month

Friday, 02/05/2014 | 12:04 GMT by Steven Hatzakis

The exchange operator just reported that the daily number of foreign exchange futures contracts traded in April was 559,000 down 34% from the 855,000 traded in March, as the start of Q2 proves challenging.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group, reported today that it had an average daily volume of 12.2 million contracts traded per day during April 2014, up 6% compared to the same month last year, across its products.

Eurodollar futures, and Eurodollar options volumes also increased year-over-year (YoY) and the exchange operator reported a number of other positive figures YoY, but foreign exchange was not one of them from a month-over-month perspective, and neither when comparing to the same month last year.

That is, average daily volumes (ADV) plummeted by 34% from $104 billion in March to $68 billion just reported for April, a decrease of just over one-third or $36 billion from the prior month’s total –which had held above the $100 billion mark.

These figures, a 34% drop, consisted of 559,000 contracts traded per day on average during April, and lower by 296,000 per day when compared to March’s ADV of 855,000 contracts, and down 38% from April 2013 from a year-over-year perspective.

CME Average Daily Volumes April 2014 and Year over Year [Source CME GROUP] — CME Average Daily Volumes April 2014 and Year-over-Year [Source CME GROUP]

Overall the total volume for April 2014, traded across the exchanges products was more than 256 million contracts, of which 87 percent was traded electronically. CME Chairman, Terry Duffy spoke at the end of April about market confidence in an interview published on Yahoo Finance, following recent events surrounding controversy over rigged benchmarks, foreign exchange, and now equities markets - following recent attention on HFT and best-execution. He said despite these, "People should feel confidence in the overall structure of the markets," and how a longer time horizon should be viewed over day-to-day short-term focus.

Just yesterday Forex Magnates reported the positive first quarter that CME reported, although the first month of Q2 appears to already be a more challenging one, as a number of venues report lower results following a drop in Forex volumes as Volatility subdued in recent weeks. The news also follows the announcement of CME Europe launching at the end of last month.