CLS Group, a US-based financial institution, providing Settlement services across the foreign Exchange (FX) market, today reported FX activity for October 2018, showing a drop in the overall daily average trading month-on-month.
During the month of October 2018, the average daily traded volume that was submitted to CLS was $7.1 trillion. When compared to the previous month, this is down 1.1 percent, falling from $1.73 trillion in September 2018.
Taking a closer look, the average daily swap FX traded volume for the month came in at $1.16 trillion. When compared to the same period in 2017, this is up by around six percent, as October 2017 had an average daily traded swap FX volume of $1.09 trillion.
While up on a year-on-year basis, the average daily traded volume for October 2018 is down when comparing it to September of this year, which achieved an average daily trading volume of $1.2 trillion. As a percentage, this is around 3 percent more than in October.
Spot FX Volumes Increase Across the Board
Moving on, CLS reported an average daily traded spot FX volume of $471 billion. Unlike swap FX, this is an increase both year-on-year and month on month. When compared to October 2017, the volume is up more than nine percent.
When measuring this against the average daily traded volume submitted to CLS in September 2018, which had a volume of $447 billion, this is also up by slightly more than five percent.
The average daily traded volume for forward FX in October was $78 million. This is the complete opposite to spot FX, as this product saw a decline from both October 2017 and September of this year.
Specifically, as October 2017 recorded an average daily traded volume of $99 million, this represents a fall of 21 percent year-on-year. When comparing October 2018 volumes to the previous month, which had an average daily traded volume of $83 million, this is also down six percent.
